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Show Page B6 Thursday, January Restaurant Seafood Beef NOW OPEN u I Serving dinner nightly from 5:00 ' ! i "i At the Resort 649-7778 Open Wednesday-Sunday from 6:00 p. m. m tu cij' -wxi&vj'w mwmi' 14, 1982 The newspaper Jiif'ii iimil...ilii.iiii jjii.i JHiiiii,.i,ii.. I., iijaiiu.i ., iiii.i i mm p . i m.ii 0 D i e)9juD GSaiSSfoilj IKS ill 'wjr Einstein and Gershwin Humanity and harmony shine in one-man shows by Rick Brough . Albert Einstein and George Gershwin will visit Park City this week. And a little thing like the fact they've been dead for a combined 55 years won't stop them. Both men are brought to life in a pair of acclaimed one-man shows to be presented pre-sented at the Egyptian Theatre by Park City Performances. Per-formances. "Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian" will be personified by movie-TV-stage actor Ed Metzger in a program next Saturday, Jan. 16 at 8 p.m. Metzger told The Newspaper he seeks in his show to display the other sides of the German genius the Einstein who was a popular member of Charlie Chaplin's Hollywood circle; the scientist who worried about the wildfire development develop-ment of nuclear energy: and the bushy-haired scholar ai Princeton, who was delighted delight-ed when the students called him "Alby". (It was a change from the stuffiness of his native land.) Painist Thomas Wright will bring an evening of music by George Gershwin to Park City on Wednesday. Wright is a teacher at Florida State University, and while he composes himself, he jokes that the only thing he'll be remembered remem-bered for "is a 16-bar FSA fight song." Metzger discusses Einstein It's a cinch that Ed Metzger will be remembered as Einstein by his audiences. The show may gain wider circulation, since he is presently pre-sently negotiating for a TV presentation. It began in the mid-'70s when Metzger, a busy TV actor, began itching for, something more substantial than guest shots on "Kojak." "I told my wife, 'Why don't we look into Einstein?'", a 5 ,;-!-" "HS. ' I liliii WH Hil.Ml HtM Wl JT ' &orin m&m i-um m t'flj -mr-Hi Mm -Ateit -4h said Metzger. "For all I knew, he was a very boring man." What he discovered was a multi-faceted humanitarian. humani-tarian. Metzger had an advantage to begin with. He had a faint resemblance to Einstein, so by using minimal makeup, and letting his hair go bushy, the transformation was made. He and his wife Laya Gelff (the show's producer-director) producer-director) researched and wrote a script from Fox Movietone newsreels and Caltech Archives. Even today, Metzger keeps an eye cocked for Einstein memorabilia or people who know stories about him. One of his most memorable finds came after he walked into an old audio store in Monterey and asked if, by chance, they had a tape of Einstein's voice. As it happened, the shop had a lengthy tape the longest, in fact, known to researchers. The show opened in 1978 in Los Angeles to loving reviews. re-views. And later in New York, Metzger recalled getting get-ting the best accolade of all. 'A reviewer from a German Ger-man paper said he wanted to introduce me to someone after the show, and I said, fine, as long as it isn't (theater critic) Clive Barnes,'" said Metzger. "Well, the person was Einstein's Ein-stein's first cousin, who had grown up with him.And I was expecting her to say, 'You don't look like him, you don't sound like him.'" "First of all, she looked just like Einstein, even though she was a woman. She was crying, saying how marvellous the show was. "And she told me, 'I am the last of my family. And I am allowing the use of the Einstein name to endorse this program. During his lifetime, Albert Einstein never used his name to recommend anything, ex- :ife:;:'S?:;Si:'a ' - ' ' ",st ; " - -v- - f - " ' ' - : ' '' cept a hospital in New York. But I am recommending this.'" This is better than any amount of praise written by a critic, Metzger enthused. Einstein was an eccentric who had a good reason for the odd things he did. "Long hair minimizes the need for a barber," Metzger said. "And when you wear shoes, socks can be done without. They only produce holes." Part of his legend, of course, is that this great genius was considered an idiot as a child. He didn't say a word for the first three years, of his life, said Metzger, but as Einstein later, explained, "I didn't have anything to say." "4j5 youngnan, Einsejy conelrfdel oJR?!iy wS nonsense. There's no such thing as a straight line. It's curved, pulled down by the earth's gravity," said Metzger. Metz-ger. "But you can imagine how a teacher in Munich in the early 1900s, hearing this, would think Einstein was crazy." He said the show is not about the theory of relativity, relati-vity, although he does explain ex-plain it in basic terms. "I use a yo-yo to demonstrate the theory," he said. But beyond that, he confessed, the theory stymies him. "Einstein wanted to explain ex-plain it to everyone. He wrote a book, 'The Theory of Relativity for High Schoolers.' School-ers.' Ninety pages. I couldn't get beyond the first two." On occasion, he takes spontaneous questions from the audience as Einstein, and inevitably, someone will challenge him to explain the idea in detail. "I tell them that the whole theory requires re-quires a basis in total mathematics and they should go to their teachers for that," said Metzger. "Einstein himself gave that answer whenever the question ques-tion came up." The theory led to nuclear energy, which would trouble Einstein in his later years. In the '30s, when it became apparent the Nazis were experimenting with atomic power, he urged the U.S. to enter the nuclear field in a famous letter to President Roosevelt. But, related Metzger, Einstein believed an A-bomb would not be ready until years after the war was over. But when a bomb was completed, the genius urged then-president Truman to destroy a deserted island as a demonstration for the Jap-anese Jap-anese military. Truman .thought that if the bomb failed publicly, the results would be renewed fighting by the Japanese. He decided to go for broke with a raid on rrfl Ed Metzger as himself. Hiroshima. "Einstein said, 'We don't have the sense of an animal, which kills for food. We kill to satisfy some need within us,'" Metzger said. Einstein dreamed of using nuclear energy. "But he might say now that we are so corrupt and fallible that we don't have the sensibility today to use it wisely." A native of Brooklyn, Metzger graduated from high school in Jacksonville, Florida and went to the University of Alabama as, ironically, a chemistry student. stu-dent. "But I decided science was not for me." He worked on TV shows like "Wagon Train", "Kaz" and "Delvec-dnWa'rfd "Delvec-dnWa'rfd films such as "Dog Day Afternoon ""lleflec t!8fc Madden Eye" with Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, Tay-lor, and "Car Wash." But Ed Metzger isn't a household name, and it's questionable if a TV network would allow him to do the show. Major actors have asked to play it for TV, he said, but he has refused. And he has one incredible story about a network proposal for "Einstein." "I can tell this about Freddy Silverman now that he's gone from NBC. My wife was talking to him and she said, 'I bet you want somebody some-body like Charlton Heston to do this show."' "And Silverman said, 'No, Heston would be all wrong. I would use the biggest star I have right now, which is Gary Coleman.'" "It's so asinine." In the meantime, the show is popular on the school circuit. cir-cuit. "I get a living from it and self-respect," Metzger says. "I don't do him honor. He does me honor." Wright discusses Gershwin "He does me honor." This could also be Thomas Wright discussing George Gershwin. Gersh-win. He speaks of Gershwin as an American original, who blazed trails in the 1920s by combining the jazz movement move-ment of the era with classical. classi-cal. "One of his biographers said he had one foot in CARNEGIE Hall and the other in Tin Pan Alley," said Wright. "He was the first one to mix them together. He was well-trained in the classics." And he was writing writ-ing hit songs like "Swanee" for Al Jolson when in his early 20s. "Personally, he was a rather complex man," said Wright. "He liked to sit down at parties and play the piano not to show off, but because he enjoyed it." He died in 1937 (age 39) of a brain tumor, but his musical legacy included KPCW Memorial Bldg. Park City 649-9004 such shows as the Broadway musicals "Strike Up the Band" and "Girl Crazy" and movies like "Goldwyn Follies", Fol-lies", and the Astaire-Rogers Astaire-Rogers film "Shall We Dance". The idea for a Gershwin show grew out of Wright's skill at the piano, ('That's just about the only instrument instru-ment I can manage," he joked,) and the friends who said he looked like the composer. After three or four months of research, Wright formed a program of music, with narration in Gershwin's own words about how the music was composed. compos-ed. The first half of the show is Carnegie Hall it features "Rhapsody in Blue", "An American in Paris", and rtPorgy'"and Bess." The second half is Tin Pan Alley, with old-time hits like "Liza" and "I Got Rhythm". Wright has taken the show to Texas, Oklahoma, and practically all the Eastern states except New England. This is his first performance in the Rocky Mountain West Wright, a native of Indiana, worked in his early career as a pianist for NBC. From week to week he played for dramas, jazz programs, classical opera, and the Kraft TV Theatre. "It was kind of a rat race," he said. On one occasion, he recalled recall-ed network needed someone to play a Hammond organ. Wright volunteered, spent the night learning how to play the organ, and next day filled in for the regular organist on a kid's show called "Howdy Doody". He has soloed with numerous numer-ous symphonies throughout the country. His original compositions include "Hollywood "Holly-wood Suite" a piece for ballet that was performed in Washington D.C. Right now, his concert work has forced him to get composing "on the back-burner" back-burner" he said. He also toured with the Paul Whiteman and Tommy Dorsey Orchestras In act during one Dorsey tour, Wright remembered that he played "Rhapsody in Blue" 90 times in six weeks. Fortunately Fortu-nately for him, he's in love with it. "It's the best melody ever written," he insisted. Gershwin is an undying heritage, he saia "You encounter him at every turn. Sometimes I listen to the radio and count how many times he turns up in an hour. He's even been done in rock." American classical composers com-posers can stand at the top of the music field, he said. "They don't have to bow to anyone." But Gershwin has a special place. "When he died, it was the end of an era. He hasn't been replaced." You can meet Dr. Einstein on Jan. 16, 8 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre. Ticket! are $4.50 for members of Park City Performance and $6.50 for non-members. Mr. Gershwin will perform Jan. 20 at 8 p.m. Admission is $4 for members and $6 for non-members. For farther information on both shows, call 649-8371. |
