If you’re going to stage a dorm debate about the meaning of life, the role of religion and science, suffering, love, guilt, the predilection of populaces to totalitarian governments, and the awe-inspiring loveliness of the universe, it would hard to find two more interesting contestants than Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka.
Miami playwright Mario Diament’s Franz & Albert receiving its U.S. premiere does a reasonably intriguing job fictionalizing a meeting that likely happened when the fledgling writer and the up-and-coming theoretical physicist attended an evening soiree for intellectuals in 1911 Prague.
Surprisingly, the avalanche of ideas, although mechanically didactic, is indeed thought-provoking as the two men volley colliding concepts, testing each other’s validity. On one level, their outlooks seem diametrically opposed: Kafka pessimistic to the point of fatalism and Einstein optimistic about the mysteries of the cosmos. But a careful hearing detects faint overlaps that say something about human beings that will take deeper thought long after the play ends.
By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Feb. 15, 2016
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