"Isaac's Eye" at Custom Made Theatre Company

Custom Made Theatre Company photo by Jay Yamada

No surprise: I like plays about science and scientists. So when I saw that Custom Made Theatre Company was producing a play about Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke, I was all in. I was also intrigued because the play is by Lucas Hnath, apparently an up-and-coming playwright who also wrote "The Christians," currently at SF Playhouse.

The Play

I was expecting a play about science, about the rivalries and personal relationships that advance and/or hinder scientific advancement. This was not that play. I mean, it is about the rivalry between Newton and Hooke, although that is a bit one-sided. Established Hooke feels threatened by the coming of young, unknown Newton. So being some kind of evil genius, he decides to destroy the nascent career of his potential rival.

Newton, on the other hand, is a socially-inept savant, probably with Asperger's or something, but also with some kind of quasi-messianic notion that he speaks for God, or God speaks through him, or something. This strikes me as a terrible misreading of Newton's nature. But he's ambitious, and wants to join the Royal Society so he can become famous, which leads him to contact Hooke, at the time the curator of experiments for the Society. The overlap in their areas of inquiry leads to conflict.

There is a sort of narrator who writes facts about Newton and Hooke on the white boards that line the stage. He also speaks a lot of stage directions and occasionally becomes another character. And then there is Catherine, and old friend of Newton's who might or might not be his love interest. But she's an apothecary, which comes in handy later.

The title of the play comes from an experiment that Newton did, historically, perform on himself, inserting a darning needle into his tear duct to deform the shape of his eyeball in an attempt to determine the nature of light (which sort of makes sense, scientifically, other than the whole sticking a needle in one's eye part). Much of the second act focuses on Newton and Hooke and a random, dying stranger and needles and eyes. Prepare to squirm. They do.

The Production

The staging is stark, with a mostly bare stage surrounded by whiteboards, and a sort of desk atop a pair of file cabinets. The lighting is harsh, fluorescent industrial lighting, and all the costuming is pretty much a dull palette of grays and browns. Except Catherine. I guess she's in color to emphasize that she's the only one who isn't really part of the mess. So we have a very modern setting, and modern language and dress, but of course this is all happening in the 1660s.

The text is pretty sloppy about adhering to the historical timeline, so I suppose we can't really expect the production to follow it, either. But the whole thing is quite jarring, from the time the lights come glaringly up on the set initially, and continue through much of the initial dialogue. The portrayal of Newton as brilliant but with socially naive notions of fame and glory just don't seem plausible. And his clueless relationship with Catherine makes little sense from either side.

Ultimately, it becomes clear that Newton's guilelessness has to exist to enable the last twist of the plot in the second act, but by then I was well beyond caring. Neither Hooke nor Newton is a believable character by then, anyway.

I would have to read the script to get a better notion of what Hnath really intends with this play. I can't tell whether he has written something that is clearly off base, or whether this production has interpreted the text in such a way as to distort what the playwright intended. Either way, it seems a pretty flawed text that isn't really improved by this production.

That said, I thought the players mostly did a pretty credible job. Adam Niemann as the narrator/actor was quite good, and Jeunee Simon does a good job with the very limited role she's given to work with as Catherine. Robin Gabrielli and Gabriel A. Ross as Hooke and Newton, respectively, are far too one-dimensional for educated men of their time. Again, I don't know whether that's necessary for this text, or represents a choice by director Oren Stevens. But neither is ultimately credible, and both characters are just kind of obnoxious.

Bottom Line

Don't bother. The play runs through March 11, and I really hoped it was going to be something interesting and cool, but it's not. It's a difficult, awkward, and frankly unenjoyable play. It has interesting bits, but particularly as the second act proceeds, it descends into a kind of mad rivalry that is neither fun to watch nor informative.

It's a disappointing result from what I had hoped would be a really interesting endeavor.