RECOMMENDED
It’s remarkable how stories of the past, with no apparent effort on the part of the storyteller, take on the coloration of the present. So it is with “The Curious Circumstances of Louis Le Prince,” an intriguing new play by Chase Wheaton-Werle running at the Factory Theater in Rogers Park under the adept direction of Becca Holloway. It’s ostensibly about the real-life title figure, a nineteenth-century French visionary who, argues the play, was the first to perfect the motion picture—rather than Thomas Alva Edison, who gets the credit. But it’s the ruthless, egomaniacal figure of Edison who grabs hold of the show, just as the play’s Edison grabs hold of other people’s inspirations, efforts and perhaps even lives when it suits his purposes. To me and perhaps others, this Edison comes off as just an older, slightly less unhinged version of Elon Musk: a one-dimensional, hyper-competitive capitalist willing to wreck lives and corrupt democracy in an Ahab-like quest for limitless wealth, power and fame.
Woe to those who cross an Edison, a Musk, a Trump, men with a messianic belief in their own destiny: those who get in their way risk becoming the roadkill of history. Which is what just might have happened to Louis Le Prince, who one day in 1890 boarded a train in Dijon, France, bound for Paris and thence New York. There he planned to publicly demonstrate the camera-projector system that he had used to create the world’s first motion picture (a two-second scene of several Le Prince family members walking in a garden) in 1888, and that he foresaw would give birth to a new art form. But Louis never got off the train and was never seen again. He left behind his English wife, Lizzie, and their son, Adolphe. His fate remains a mystery to this day, a mystery that spans three countries (France, U.K., United States) and has spawned any number of theories, including some involving Edison.
From this bare-bones scenario, playwright Wheaton-Werle has crafted a gripping, thought-provoking play that knocks Edison off his purloined pedestal and reveals the underside of commercially driven science. “There’s no second place in the world of invention,” declares Louis, who suspects that he may be the victim of industrial espionage and orchestrated, mysterious interference to his patent claims.
The play is told from the point of view of his initially reluctant son who, together with his doggedly loyal mother, attempts to find out what happened to his vanished dad and to ensure that Louis gets full credit for his invention. During their truth-gathering trek, the pair encounter a Dickensian cross-section of late-Victorian society, ranging from eccentric English landladies to supercilious French bureaucrats to double-dealing American lawyers to the grandiose Edison himself, who at one point declares that the newly assembled General Electric Company should be named after him, because he is America. The play has a cinematic expansiveness, with a cast of eight playing a dozen sharply delineated roles. But the plot remains sharply focused, moving ineluctably toward a courtroom climax in which Edison’s prestige, however legitimate, is weighed against the Le Prince family’s hard-won evidence and appeal to simple justice.
It’s the stuff of classic drama, and it’s given intense, plausible life by an all-star cast of local stage stalwarts. Ethan Smith hits all the right notes as the outwardly logical, inwardly passionate Adolphe, who, as the play opens, is trying to emerge from the grief that has enveloped his family since his father’s disappearance, and who prefers to go duck hunting rather than to head off on what he fears will be a wild goose chase into his father’s past. Aimee Kleiman as Lizzie and Joe Sergio as Louis, who appears in flashbacks, give savory performances with a nineteenth-century-style melodramatic flair—but both actors’ accents are laid on so thick that subtitles would come in handy. The numerous secondary parts are played with clarity and gusto by Joel Ottenheimer, Ksa Curry, Andrew Bosworth and Alex Albrecht. The brawny, bull-necked Patrick Blashill as Edison dominates the second act, emphasizing not Edison’s vaunted ingenuity so much as his deviousness and vanity. Under Holloway’s direction, all the performances mesh well, lending the production a tight ensemble feeling.
The actors are costumed handsomely and authentically by Victoria Jablonski. Even more worthy of praise is set designer Hayley Wallenfeldt, whose work is complemented by props designer Rachel Livingston. Together, they transform Factory Theater’s shallow stage into the box-like innards of an old-fashioned movie camera, or perhaps projector, within which the action takes place. An enormous lens dominates center stage; it opens and closes, creating either a window effect or a screen for David Sajewich’s well-executed projections, while a series of cleverly designed trunks with different things inside also open and close to indicate domestic, commercial and official spaces. The immersive set is enhanced by Jack Goodman’s sensitive lighting, which bathes the performers in sepia-toned space, redolent of old photos, aging film stock and fading memories.
The play ends on something of an anti-climax—not surprising for a real-life unsolved mystery. Was Edison somehow responsible for Le Prince’s long-ago vanishing act? It seems unlikely, although it is true that Edison’s early-twentieth-century movie patent monopoly was maintained for some years in part through a policy of industrial sabotage and general thuggery. One thing, though, does seem certain: Edison was not the sole begetter of the motion picture, but rather the heir to a long series of incremental advances in camera and film technology. He obtained final credit and lucrative patent rights by having not the best ideas, but rather the best lawyers, as well as the most connections and perhaps the fewest scruples. As Lizzie comments, official history is written by the victors. But as this play shows, it’s the less-read history written from the losers’ perspective that is often the most informative and insightful.
Factory Theater has outdone itself with this world-premiere production that not only moves, teaches and entertains us, but also challenges us to see our own times in the flickering light of a primitive movie projector. “The Curious Circumstances of Louis Le Prince” is a fascinating, myth-busting exploration of that cultural focal point where art, science and money meet—the point where modern consciousness is forged. See it if you can.
“The Curious Circumstances of Louis Le Prince” runs through July 19 at the Factory Theater, 1623 West Howard. Tickets are $30 and may be purchased at the door or by visiting TheFactoryTheater.com.
