QED

Broadway has a signature song this year, it’s "you gotta have soul". I’m sure that’s why there are so many one-man, one-woman shows. Biography and autobiography are at the top of the theatrical pecking order.

In one such work, QED, Alan Alda portrays the Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, whose work on the spin of electrons was inspired by the wobble and spin of a flying plate he saw in the Cornell cafeteria. Clearly a man with a unique sense of dish, Feynman talks about his favorite subjects, from travel and bongo playing, to some unresolved feelings he has about his own achievements.

A contributor to the development of the atom bomb and a critic of NASA for its CHALLENGER disaster, the inventor is portrayed here in a light-hearted vein. Speaking with a Jewish New York accent, Feynman talks to us as if we were sitting in his living room. This is how he introduces us to Quantum Electrodynamics. QED is the theory that apparently allows us to understand everything from the galaxy down to the nucleus. But for the warm and humorous Feynman, it’s the beauty of nature, and how she works inside, that remains a mystery, the same unfathomable mystery as the nucleus itself.

When the student, Miriam Field, who intermittently knocks on his door finally appears on stage, it is a welcome change of pace. The two of them toss a Frisbee, discuss Feynman’s collegiate acting career, and dance up a storm.

While QED offers interesting insights about the physicist, the play is too lengthy, finally spinning out of control while revealing only that which is predictable. On the other hand, Alan Alda’s portrayal of the man, who having discovered the key to the universe faces his own fatality, is captivating.

That’s This Week on Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.