One Day Earlier - A Review

Eugene Vigner, played by a significantly less bald Pat Shea

So I know that my last two reviews were not exactly glowing, but that’s about to change with Constance Cogden’s One Day Earlier. Now before I continue: a brief caveat. I know Connie. A little over a decade ago I starred in a production of her (then) new adaptation of Moliere’s The Misanthrope at Amherst College. I had recently dropped out of school but was sort of lingering around Western Massachusetts like a benign tumor. And since all I seemed capable of doing was acting in college theater, I auditioned for the show and was cast. I fear that her very clever adaptation deserved a better production than the one afforded it, but to be fair that’s how I wound up meeting Olivia D’Ambrosio , now famed Artistic Director of Bridge Rep. I’m not trying to name drop, just trying to be transparent regarding my allegiances.

However, even if I’d never known Connie, I’d already be biased towards this play. One Day Earlier is an autobiographical romp of Eugene Wigner, a theoretical physicist from the 20^th century, detailing the five instances in which he could have possibly prevented the invention of the atomic bomb. It’s got history. It’s got science. It’s got history of science. You have to understand: this genre is like catnip to me. Where some people find Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen to be obtuse and boring, I find a great epistemological mystery. While some people find Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia too dense and convoluted, I find great majesty and rapture in the mathematics of chaos. I absolutely love this kind of play, and I love it even more when it’s delivered with not only care and love for both the subject matter and the characters, but the greater meaning behind it all.

The play concerns itself entirely with the perspectives of pioneering physicists of the time, Eugene Wigner (a delightfully understated Pat Shea), Louis Szilard (an electrifying Ken Cheeseman),  Lise Meitner (a convincingly embodied Bobbie Steinbach) and of course Albert Eintstein (played with a weary poignance by Keith Langsdale). At first, entrenched in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, they one by one navigate toward the States, each reaching simultaneous conclusions regarding the scientific excitement of splitting the atom and the destructive nature thereof.

Facing the monstrosity of the Nazis, each physicist eventually sides with the allies. The question becomes not: “who are we giving this power to?” but “Will the Nazis construct the atomic bomb before we do?” Hence the title: One Day Later. Each scientist recoils at the potential destructive power of the device. But each, in turn resolves that the technology is better in the hands of Allies than the Axis powers, which all things considered was probably a good call.

The play itself is bookended with a mosaic of voices from the time right before and during the first military deployment of an atomic bomb: Nagasaki. There is clear regret from the tone of the narrator: Eugene Wigner despairs the decisions which lead to such a catastrophe, a sentiment echoed by his compatriots throughout each bookend. Yet each has a hand in the chain of events which lead to such a cataclysm. Mostly through the process of scientific curiosity, a motivation I’m inclined to interpret with benign benevolence, each scientist is rudely thrust into the midst of global politics on an unquantifiable scale.

Indeed I thought the play was simply magnificent. I only have one very slight complaint. First: when Leo requires Wigner to study his data, and likewise when Otto takes a walk with Lise. Both conversations included way more explanation of the phenomenon than would make sense for such experts in their field. Particularly when Wigner begins to quantify the atoms of beryllium/uranium he verbalizes the process of logarithmic doubling: a pattern which should be self explanatory and not require the stunned verbalization of two the second power that Wigner indulges us in.

At the same time, I understand and respect the need to make the science clear to a general audience. Actually, Congdon is masterful in making the science understandable. As the play progresses, each character chips away at the problem from a different angle, in essence allowing us to journey through the process of discovery along with her protagonists. There were just a few times when I felt the hand of the playwright forcing the voice of the characters to slow down and over explain themselves so that the audience could catch up. But then I suppose if she hadn’t, the conversations might have been incomprehensible to anyone lacking scientific literacy.

There was so much about this play that I found deeply gripping. It has the most human portrayal of Einstein I’ve ever seen characterized. (it helps that he plays a tertiary character) The ebuliant friendship between Wigner and Leon borders the realm of a mad scientist buddy-film. That character, in particular, has so many great lines. When detailing his make-shift experiments with Barium conducted in his hotel room Leo gripes, “Hotel maids have no appreciation for Science.” Cheeseman is marvelous in the part: his limbs flailing, his mouth racing, his entire body struggling to catch up to the pace of his mind.

Likewise Pat Shea has a resigned dignity, as he tallies his “sins”. The culmination of those sins occurs when he and Leo convince Einstein to write his now famous letter to FDR. The letter in question prophesized the danger of allowing Germany to construct an atomic bomb before the Americans did, and urged the swift creation of a nuclear program to rival. It’s unclear how much impact that letter had, but the play does a good job of convincing us of its importance. Congdon shows us how it was only a small group of very well educated people who could have possible deduced the capability of splitting the atom, let alone seen the potential damage. It makes sense that only those on the vanguard of this research would have been able to warn governments of its imminent construction.

But in the end, One Day Earlier is a play about a group of people having to reconcile their actions, as innocuous and well intentioned as they were, with the consequences of those actions. The play begins and ends with a fury of mangled voices leading up to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by a high pitched 15 second drone. It’s a powerful auditory “image” and a fitting way of describing an act whose toll and implications are so monstrous that language itself struggles and fails to convey.

Though maybe I just liked it because of the length. After five hours of sitting in plastic folding chairs, One Day Earlier (clocking in at about an hour) was mercifully brief.