‘Heisenberg’ holds audience’s attention

The full title of “Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle,” now playing at Jewel Theatre Company in Santa Cruz through Oct. 10, offers some valuable insight into this thoughtful, provocative production.

And, with two exquisite actors like Erika Schindele and Paul Whitworth playing the only two characters in “Heisenberg,” the 90-plus minute play — done without an intermission — has the audience’s rapt attention throughout.

It’s definitely uncertainty that keeps the audience wondering what will happen next. Director Paul Mullins pulls the puppet strings of his characters tighter and tighter until almost the last scene.  Then the characters — and the plot — comes to a surprising end.

Andrea Bechert’s spare, meaningful set is on three tiers — with only a bench, a metal table and chairs and a few pieces of clothing scattered about. Behind are white, angular ropes pulled tight, some at cross angles, some perpendicular and a few straight up-and-down in pairs.

It isn’t until close to the play’s end that the audience comes to understand those seemingly haphazard ropes. That’s true for the jarring, loud rock music that plays at several junctures as well.

But along the way the audience comes to first chuckle at, then feel for, later understand and even later still, grow to love these two damaged characters who somehow find each other and realize they each have something to give the other that is sorely needed in their lives.

For at least the first half of the play, the audience can’t be blamed for not trusting Georgie.  She makes up lie after lie, about who she is, why she’s at a random London train station, where she lives, what’s her con, and why — for heaven’s sake! — did she just go up and kiss the back of the neck of a total stranger (who turns out to be Alex).

Georgie tells so many falsehoods that sometimes even she can’t remember what’s truth and what’s fiction.

Then she makes the cardinal sin of Googling the random man she met at the train station.  He had given her his name and told her what he did for a living.  Turns out Alex is a butcher and owns his own butcher shop.  But Georgie doesn’t believe that a man who appeared so refined could be a butcher.

She finds the name of his shop when she Googles him.  Next thing you know, she’s walking in the door of his store.

This is such unusual behavior that Alex, who leads a rather drab, uneventful life, decides she must be stalking him.

But eventually the talkative — nonstop usually — Georgie becomes a little less annoying, albeit exhausting.  And, incredibly, the twosome — he’s 75, she’s 42 — agree to go on a date.  Against Alex’s better judgment.

By this time Alex has become a bit of a ‘project’ for Georgie. He tells her that he writes 50 words — no more, no less — in his diary every day for the past 67 years. She tells him, “You’re actually a lot more boring that I thought you were!”

Little by little, these two polar opposites of human beings discover they can bring another dimension into each other’s lives.  Georgie reminds Alex that he has just one life to live — and it’s closing in on his last years.

Eventually Alex realizes that for all her quirkiness, Georgie brings excitement — perhaps even happiness — into his life.  When he visits her at her job on a children’s playground, she tells him, “I miss your quietness.  Everything’s so noisy when you’re not around.”

Unlikely as it seems, the twosome end up in bed together and have more than passable sex from the look on Alex’s face.

But the whole business about Georgie’s son living in Jersey and how she needs 52,000 British pounds to fly there and find him seems forced. Why couldn’t she just entice Alex to come to the U.S. with her so she can show him the sights? After all, as she tells him, “How many more Christmases have you got in you?”

At play’s end, Georgie surprises him by taking tango lessons so she can dance with him. And apparently they tango off into the sunset.

This also feels like a false note. It’s certainly not the fault of the actors, nor of director Mullins.  Rather, playwright Simon Stephens occasionally seems a hair off of what he intended. Or not.  “Heisenberg” is, after all, the uncertainty principle.

Contact Joanne Engelhardt at features@santacruzsentinel.com.

If you go:

Produced by: Jewel Theatre Company
Directed by: Paul Mullins
When: Through Oct. 10
Tickets: $45-$50
Details: www.jeweltheatre.net; 831-425-7506