Einstein on the Beach, at Barbican, Seven magazine review

What’s in a name? In the case of Einstein on the Beach, not much, at least not if you’re expecting seaside theories of relativity. But even if you know what to expect of this groundbreaking 1976 collaboration between Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, Einstein is no longer quite what it once seemed, and certainly not one of the greatest theatrical experiences of the 20th century, as many have claimed.

There are good reasons for the Barbican to have bought into its worldwide tour, being staged in honour of Glass’s 75th birthday. Einstein hasn’t been to Britain before and it occupies an important place: the first of Glass’s more than 20 operas, it launched his series of “portrait” works that include Satyagraha (about Gandhi) and Akhnaten.

Lacking the expressive depth of these more frankly conventional operatic pieces, the Einstein score boasts its own minimalistic purity and a structural rigour that holds it together for five unbroken hours.

As shown by this re-creation of the original production by director Wilson and choreographer Lucinda Childs, the experience is cleansing enough, if sometimes in a colonic irrigation sort of a way.

As for the irony of a work inspired by intellectual genius being so mind-numbing and lacking in logic, that is what you always get from Wilson’s trademark zombified semaphoring.

Though Glass conceived it in close collaboration with Wilson, it might help if his music (performed here with precision by The Philip Glass Ensemble under Michael Riesman) could be given a life of its own.

For now, the slow-moving stage pictures strive clunkily for effects that could be conjured up today at the touch of a computer key: they feel like bad, period performance.

To May 13; www.barbican.org.uk

This review also appeared in SEVEN, free with the Sunday Telegraph

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