Peter Tate (Photo by Brigitta Scholz Mastroianni/NUX Photography)
Reviewed by Lovell Estell III
Odyssey Theater
Through May 17
Peter Tate (Photo by Brigitta Scholz Mastroianni/NUX Photography)
The meaning of your life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. – Pablo Picasso
To call Pablo Picasso an influential figure of 20th century art does not quite hit the mark. The term iconoclast is more appropriate. Picasso’s Cubist style completely transformed the art of visual language; his paintings have graced some of the world’s most prestigious museums and exhibition halls; and his style inspired major artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat and many others. Even today, more than 50 years after his death, his enigmatic works incite spirited discussion and debate among academics and art aficionados.
He was a complicated man, to say the least, and bringing him to life convincingly on the stage is a daunting task. British actor Peter Tate and director Guy Masterson are partially successful in this effort. Still, this is a thin script that provides little insight and perspective about Picasso the artist and his immense contribution to 20th century art. Its speedy glimpse into Picasso’s life journey is focused almost exclusively on his unpleasant, decades-long and well-documented relationships with various women, which, as the lady who accompanied me remarked, “proves that he was a jerk.”
Against the backdrop of an enveloping cloth screen, a paint-smeared floor canvass, and a large folding ladder (nicely done by Eirini Kariori), Tate relates the story of Picasso’s early life: his contentious relationship with his mother, the birth of his sister and the trauma of witnessing that event, and his early love of drawing. From there, the narrative moves to his early years as a struggling artist in Paris and the first of his many disagreeable relationships with women (“my muses,” he calls them, whose images appear throughout, projected onto the cloth screen). Not much is explored about their feelings or perceptions, and why they accepted his constant abuse.
His rabid egotism (some would say megalomania) and maniacal obsession with finding the perfect love to inspire his art, (I seduce women to paint them,” he brags) is never sated, and it slowly drives him into a sort of madness, leaving a swath of pain and misery in its wake. (Two of his lovers committed suicide, as did his grandson.)
Tate successfully captures the overbearing, mercurial side of Picasso’s personality, and his enigmatic, often terrifying Joie de Vivre, but after a brief time during this short play, the acrimony, the sexual trysts, and the blatant cruelty start to feel blandly repetitive. Sadly, Picasso’s towering creative intellect scarcely emerges.
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West LA. Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm. Sun., 3 pm; thru May 17. https://odysseyTheatre.com Runtime: approximately 70 minutes with no intermission.
