Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (Adventures of a Curious Character)

Edited by:
  • Mike Maran

Richard Feynman is one of a very small band of theoretical physicists whose names have a chance of being recognized by the general public. This is not because of a just appreciation of the powerful calculational techniques that won him a Nobel prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. Rather, it is because of the persona he created for himself as a fun-loving, bongo-drum-playing guy who just happened to be brilliant at physics. This carefully cultivated image is powerfully conveyed in the best-selling book after which this stage production has been named and from which it draws much of its material. (Characteristically, the book was compiled from verbal anecdotes by a member of the Leighton family, faithful amanuenses to Feynman, who was himself an actor rather than a playwright.)

Many people have enjoyed the book, though I have to say that, though I am a great admirer of Feynman the physicist, I have never cared for it much. Beneath all the jokiness there is a clear subtext: I am cleverer than anyone else and here are a hundred stories to prove it. But the image of the New York kid was a mask behind which a much more complex and interesting character was concealed. This is evident from the fact that when James Gleick came to write his balanced and successful biography, Genius, he found a detailed and carefully preserved archive available to him — not quite what one might have expected of someone whose public stance was that he would have liked to have ducked out of all the trouble involved in accepting a Nobel prize (a story repeated in this show but one that I have never believed).

Both the persona and something of the man beneath it are displayed in this lively stage production. Its form is essentially that of the cabaret, a succession of stories, accompanied by visual images and punctuated by episodes of the South American rhythms Feynman liked so much, skilfully performed on a variety of exotic instruments.

There are serious moments — the tragic early death of his first wife Arlene is recalled and there is an account of Feynman's agonized reaction to the devastation of Hiroshima by the atomic bomb he had helped to build.

Dick Feynman had a deep intuitive understanding of vast ranges of science outside his chosen speciality and a considerable ability to convey insight to non-scientists in a lucid and striking way. In the show, this is best exemplified by his beautiful observation that a tree grows out of the air and not out of the earth, and by his incisive and deceptively simple contribution at the end of his life to the enquiry into the Challenger disaster, identifying the cause as the effect of low temperature on the seals of the fuel compartments.

The production drags a little towards the end of its hour-and-a-half, when a valiant attempt to convey something of the Feynman diagram technique is, almost inevitably, somewhat confused and confusing, and where there is, perhaps, undue recourse to drumming to fill in gaps in the continuity.

Nevertheless, Mike Maran is to be congratulated on a lively contribution to what seems to be a growing genre of dramatic performances with some scientific content. I attended a 4 p.m. performance at which at least half the audience appeared to be under the age of 16. I am sure that these young people will have caught something of the excitement and value of science through this performance, inspired by someone who was both a very great scientist and an accomplished showman.