By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Ryan Fagan
Roberto Guajardo and Dallas Thomas accidentally discover compatibility after meeting in a London train station.
Do you really believe that inside each of us is a little round bomb of pure joy just waiting for the right time to explode with unrestrained happiness? All it takes to ignite is meeting the right person at the right time in the right place.
Whether or not that is actually true, we love to think it might be. That even if life feels full of sadness today, everything could change in the wink of an eye – especially if that wink is directed at you by someone particularly attractive.
This is the magic promised in the ominous-sounding “Heisenberg” by Simon Stephens, a disarmingly charming two-person play said to apply the famous scientist's Uncertainty Principle to random human relationships.
Maybe it does, who knows? We never hear him referenced in the play itself.
What we know for sure is Dallas Thomas' performance is pure delight, filled with so many eccentric mannerisms and illogical explanations you love her for being so wacko!
For Thomas – who through the years hasn't been on stage nearly enough – this is a break-out role of headliner proportions. She plays Georgie, kind of a second generation 43-year-old hippie American who married an Englishman and lives in London.
Later on we learn her husband passed away somewhat recently. By the same token, no buttoned-up Londoner would be bouncing around the city with Georgie's high-pressure froth of excessive intensity.
She also seems to have a full-blown case of Asperger syndrome, with ideas flying unfiltered straight from her brain to her mouth in aggressive speech patterns of staccato intensity.
If that sounds terminally annoying...yes, it is. But within this performance there is an equal amount of caring that makes her effusive behavior feel genuine.
Playing opposite Georgie is Roberto Guajardo as 75-year-old Alex, a bonafide British butcher and confirmed bchelor who spent most of those years sitting on the sidelines of his own life.
Sabian Trout the director created between these two mismatched personalities a beautifully balanced mating dance of trust. The performance I attended was complimented with a standing ovation.
There isn't a plot so much as there is a string of combustible reactions that progress through seven scenes performed with no intermission. Georgie is, of course, the volatile component. She explodes (so to speak) upon first contact with Alex, changing him from inert matter to being a buzzy someone feeling rather confused.
As these fizzy bits of interacting behavior continue, he slowly transforms from confusion to guarded wariness to downright helpless curiousity. That's when Georgie cleverly sets the hook and begins to reel in her catch. But landing him is another matter.
“Heisenberg” continues through Sept. 30 with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, at Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd. Tickets are $15 Thursdays; $20 all other performances, with discounts available. For further details and reservations, 520-327-4242, or visit livetheatreworkshop.org
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