April 19, 1999
THEATER REVIEW
Leaping
To the Stage From Tragic Headlines
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Is there a more timely play in New York right now
than ''Tesla's
Letters''?
This well-written, well-constructed drama by Jeffrey
Stanley is
no less than an anguished cri de coeur for American intervention to
halt
slaughter in the Balkans. Though the play set in 1997 after the Serbian
infliction of death and destruction on Croatia, its passion and
yearning
for an end to war and mass death remain applicable and compelling as
Serbia
overruns Kosovo.
Besides constituting pertinent, intelligent, instructive,
well-acted,
well-directed and often witty and suspenseful theater, ''Tesla's
Letters,''
through April 26 at the Ensemble Studio Theater, represents an
auspicious
beginning for a project called First Light.
This $500,000, three-year collaboration between the
theater and the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a festival of new works, in the form of
productions,
commissions to playwrights and readings, that explore science and
technology.
In keeping with that enterprise, ''Tesla's
Letters,'' smartly
directed by Curt Dempster, the artistic director of the Ensemble Studio
Theater, is built around the visit of Daisy Archer (Keira Naughton), a
young American doctoral candidate, to the Nikola Tesla museum in
Belgrade.
Tesla (1856-1943), as the play deftly makes clear, was a Croatian-born
Serb who was one of the most remarkable men of science.
This genius immigrated to the United States in 1884,
gave the
world the alternating electrical current it runs on, developed the
wireless
transmission of electricity and perhaps, as the play suggests, a death
ray capable of bringing instantaneous death to millions.
He also incurred the enmity of Thomas A. Edison, who
smeared him
in an effort to discredit Tesla's threat to his less efficient direct
current
electrical system. Tesla, who held hundreds of patents, died broke and
alone.
''Tesla saw the 20th century unfolding,'' says
Biljana (Judith
Roberts), the white-haired woman who is apparently the secretary to the
museum's director. ''He didn't like what he saw, and wanted to change
it.''
Although Daisy arrives in Belgrade believing she
has permission
to examine the museum's archives for her dissertation on Tesla's life
away
from the laboratory, she has not reckoned with the director,
Dragan
(Victor Slezak), a Serb with family in Croatia.
He will put Daisy to tests: of her knowledge of
Yugoslav history,
of her knowledge of Tesla, of her willingness to risk her life and her
American innocence of death and destruction to venture into Croatia to
gather photographic evidence to determine whether Tesla's birthplace
has
survived war's devastation.
On the way she will encounter a young man named
Zoran (Grant James
Varjas), who becomes her guide. Although ''Tesla's Letters'' is a drama
of ideas about war and peace, the exercise of humanity and the uses of
science, it is a measure of its appeal as theater that its first act
ends
not with a whimper but a bang.
Led by the strong, highly charged performance of Mr.
Slezak and
the firm, bright portrayal of Ms. Naughton, ''Tesla's Letters''
provides
a multitude of rewards.
TESLA'S LETTERS
By Jeffrey Stanley; directed by Curt Dempster; production stage
manager, John C. McNamara; sets by Paula Sjoblom; lighting by Jeff
Croiter;
costumes by Julie Doyle; sound by Robert Gould. Presented by the the
Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation and the Ensemble Studio Theater, Mr. Dempster,
artistic
director; M. Edgar Rosenblum, executive director; Jamie Richards,
executive
producer. At 549 West 52d Street, Clinton.
WITH: Victor Slezak (Dragan Milincevic), Judith Roberts
(Biljana), Keira
Naughton (Daisy Archer) and Grant James Varjas (Zoran Jelecic).