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Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays
by Steve Martin
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Grove Press (1997-08-07)
ISBN: 0802135234
EAN: 9780802135230
Dewy Decimal #: 812.54
Paperback: 160 pages
Edition: 1st Pbk. Ed
SKU: B-3-7
Condition: Very Good
Comments: Expedited shipping available. Pages are unmarked. Binding is tight. Cover has no issues.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Steve Martin is one of America's treasured comedic actors, having appeared in some of the most popular movies of our time. He is also an accomplished screenwriter who has for the past few years turned his attention to writing plays. The results, collected here, demonstrate new facets of the range and talent he possesses on screen. His plays hilariously explore very serious questions about love and happiness and the meaning of life; they are rich with equal parts pain and slapstick humor, torment and wit. Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Steve Martin's first full-length play, opened at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater before moving on to Los Angeles (where it was the longest-running show in the history of the Westwood Playhouse) and, finally, to New York. An imagined meeting of Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein in 1904 - when both men were in their twenties - it is a compelling examination of science and art and their impact on a rapidly changing society. As the two men engage in a battle of ideas about probability, lust, artistic integrity, and the future, the play moves with ease between the breezy and the profound. Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays contains three one-acts, first presented together at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York. WASP depicts an archetypal middle-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family trying to live up to the routine of an idealized fifties suburbia. It is a dark and surreal comedy - a broad satire punctuated with insightful and poetic moments of irony. A meditation on the nature of love and loneliness, The Zig-Zag Woman concerns a woman so desperate to find affection that, with the help of a magic trick, she appears to divide her body into threeparts. In the final play, Patter for the Floating Lady, a magician plans to levitate his assistant in order to give her what he could not give her when they were together: freedom.
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Amazon.com Review
Ever wonder what it would have been like if wild and crazy Steve Martin had written an episode of "The Twilight Zone"? Well, wonder no more. The zany actor/comedian made playwright rookie of the year with this, the script of his first comedy, set in a bar in 1904 Paris. Two of the regulars, twentysomethings Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein, argue about the art of physics and the physics of art as they try to impress and bed a pretty girl. And then the space/time/culture continuum ruptures, and they're joined by a figure from the future who seems to be . . . Elvis Presley! Read for yourself why the show's been done Off-Broadway and at regionals around the country.
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Customer Reviews
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Steve Martin, The Thinker
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-07-31
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Well, there you have it. The English theater has Tom Stoppard and the American, Steve Martin. In these degraded times, it is a wonder he has not been given a tenured spot as Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. No doubt, that is in the works. Or maybe he can join Anna Deavere Smith at Stanford. In America today, our playwrights become tenured professors with reserved parking, even before they have established themselves in their chosen field. One play is enough, as long as it "says" the right sort of things. This is a ghastly piece of fluff, a Saturday Night Live skit stretched out over an evening. I suppose Martin got the idea of throwing famous people together from Steve Allen, who loved to enact celebrity diners, or maybe he ripped off the idea from Stoppard's own "Travesties," which put Lenin and Joyce together on stage. In any case, here we have an amusing skit which every theatre in America had to put into their season of "exciting new plays." I am not aware of Martin's ever again having written for the stage. Perhaps UCLA had better consider transferring him from the theater department to the department of fame.
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Worth it for Picasso
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-03-13
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I think in reality this probably deserves 4 stars, but I love "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" too much to rate it anything below 5. It's a great read and a lot of fun to act. It's funny on so many levels - everything from wacky and silly to crude to smart to dry humor down to the very subtle (like having an "e-shaped pie."... it's a math joke (pi)). The ideas in it are great, and I especially enjoyed comparing science to art. It's as much fun to think about intellectually as it is to see the different characters bounce off of each other. It's the kind of play that reaches everyone differently - especially through the various types of humor.
The other plays are so-so, some better than others. I like them for their read, but it's harder to see them as plays - perhaps I'm wrong. I liked Floating Lady because of the emotions and intensity I imagined as I performed it in my head. I liked Zig-Zag Woman because it was kind of cute, but I think I expected too much of the ending as I read it, so was a little disappointed. WASP was also somewhat interesting to read and draw ideas from, but as a play in and of itself I didn't enjoy it very much.
Hope that helps. In the end, just buy it for "Picasso..."
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Honestly...
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-02-09
I've never read the other plays in this book, so I can only comment on Lapin Agile. This play alone is worth purchasing the volume for. If you are familiar with the other scripts or plays that Martin has written, this will not dissapoint. The pacing is perfect. The humor is amazing. The visitor is hilarious.
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Subpar
Rating (3)
Date: 2006-05-30
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
As a fan of Martin's other published works, I was disappointed with this one. Most of Martin's concepts come from "pretty far out there", but this one just misses the target completely.
"Picasso...", which is the centerpiece of the book, shows Picasso, Einstein, and others discussing the impact of art in an otherwise uneventful 20th Century. While this play has its moments, there are not enough of those moments to revive it from blandness. The three remaining plays are shorter and largely forgettable. "The Zig-Zag Woman" and "Patter for the Floating Lady" uses magic tricks as a device to discuss philosophies of love. The only thing I would find remotely interesting about "Zig-Zag Woman" would be the tricks being performed on stage including separating the torso from the woman's body. "Wasp" is a dry mockery of the 1950's mores of America. Since this theme has been done well before, Martin need not have tried it.
I enjoyed "Shopgirl", "Pleasure of My Company", and "Underpants" as written by Steve Martin. I really could have lived without this book.
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Intellectual and charming
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-07-07
1 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I really enjoyed reading the play. What made it even better was seeing the play a few months later. I definitely recommend reading the book before it is on stage. This plays particularly appeals to anyone who's interested in clever dialogs and has a wild imagination.
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