By Dino Perusko ’24

“You take a couple of geniuses, put them in a room together and… Holy schalmoley”, a line from unintentionally funny and old Gaston, might best describe what has been rehearsing for the past 1 month and a half on the BPAC stage at Wyoming Seminary. Sem’s drama department has been preparing its first spring play after almost a three-year break due to the pandemic, and it is coming back in full swing.

Set in a smoky cabaret in Paris, Picasso at the Lapin Agile presents two geniuses at the start of their career in 1904, just one year before Albert Einstein transformed physics by publishing his Special Theory of Relativity, and three years before the famous painter shook the art world with his cubism in the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The play also casts time-traveling Elvis Presley and slightly delusional scientist Schmendiman.

Filled with the new ideas that have transformed the 20th century, the play takes its audience from humor-filled scenes to more serious and thought-provoking dialogues set in the dawn of the 20th century. With hilarious one-liners, shaky and unstable relationships, and two geniuses that have marked the 20th century,  the play is secured to keep the audience entertained, shaking from laughter, and engaged since “the lights came up, and the lights went down”.

Directed by Ellen Sherry, featuring Dino Perusko ‘24 as Freddy, Harry Xu ‘25 as Gaston, Peyton Popple ‘23 as Germaine. Benecio Carpentier ‘24 as Einstein, Ari Froehlich ‘24 as Sagot, Ainsley Eidam’23 as Picasso, Kate Soreth ‘26 as Schmendiman, Anna Chong ‘24 as Countess, Holly Egbert ‘23 / Lauren Urosevich ‘23 as admirers and Alex Smulowitz ‘25 as a visitor, this absurdist comedy written by Steve Martin will shine on stage, in the black-box setting of BPAC, on Friday, April 28, as the first spring play at Sem since 2019.