“Pah-zle,” the voice of Dave Demke as philosopher Karl Popper intones for the fiftieth time, and the audience is not sure whether to laugh or take it seriously. The Fly-Bottle is a play composed of two complementary tones—the ridiculously exaggerated idiosyncrasies of the three philosophers and the tragic pathos of the three men—both of which intersect the purely academic philosophical issues bandied about in the course of the play.
The other two philosophers appearing as characters in The Fly-Bottle are Bertrand Russell, played by Dennis Krausnick, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, played by Michael Hammond. The acting of these three men is utterly superb. Watching them, one cannot tell they are actors playing a part.
The story of the play centers around a heated incident in 1946 in Cambridge’s Moral Science Club, when the objectivist philosophy of visiting lecturer Popper came up against the subjectivist philosophy of club chairman Wittgenstein. In receiving his invitation to give remarks on a few “philosophical puzzles,” Popper saw his chance to challenge Wittgenstein’s theory that there are no true philosophical problems, only puzzles of our own making. The playwright, David Egan, presents that incident as recounted by Popper, and then as told by Wittgenstein’s followers.
The dialogue is brilliantly written; the back and forth between men with such a great command of the abstract is exactly as elegant as one expects it to be, and at times as clever. For example, Russell tells Popper in a conversation the afternoon before the incident in the Moral Science Club that, when it comes to long hours of tedious set theory, he “much prefer[s] fucking.” In other words, the humor of The Fly-Bottle comes from the interplay between the three philosophers, just as the more serious moments do.
The scope of the play includes nothing outside the lives of the characters, and in keeping with that the one set is minimally but tastefully decorated. There are no fancy tricks of lighting or sound, and the actors wear suits and jackets. The Fly-Bottle is a play where everything should be designed to focus attention on the actors and the dialogue, and this is exactly what the technical aspects do.
Overall, The Fly-Bottle is a wonderful play, and the actors performing it are extraordinarily talented. The entertainment value of the play far outstrips any insight it sheds on whether Popper’s or Wittgenstein’s ideas are more correct or influential, but watching those concepts dance a ballet of the abstract on the stage, coupled with the very real human drama in the lives of the three men, is very enriching indeed. The play has four more performances: September 15-18 in the auditorium of the Biotech Center at 8 pm. This is not a show to miss.
