Physics class QED is blinded with science BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	The troubadour ms. anderson’s rÉsumÉ If Laurie Anderson isn’t the most famous performance artist in the world, as she has been described, she certainly deserves to be. The conversational and whimsical style of her performances, which comes across on her many albums, does not mean that her observations are superficial, only that they are clear, unpretentious, and directed more at providing questions than answers. Concluding the 2005 FirstWorksProv series of performances, Anderson will appear November 3 in a free forum and November 4 in a multimedia solo concert at VMAArts &Cultural Center. Anderson’s new work, The End of the Moon, is based on her experiences and research in 2003 as NASA’s first artist-in-residence. Topics she touches upon range from war and the space race to consumerism and spirituality. The anecdotal style of the vocalist and violinist coincides with her self-described ambition to be a troubadour, which she expressed in an interview last year as wanting "to just absorb the world, and to try to express it in a very light way." That should sound familiar to those who have followed Anderson’s recording career. Her big break was in 1980 when the single "O Superman" rose to number two on the British pop charts and subsequently appeared on the album Big Science. (How many pop songs get anywhere with the sweet-voiced singer starting out speaking German and then singing in an intentionally discordant little-girl voice?) Since that debut, she has issued nine albums, including Mister Heartbreak, Strange Angels, Bright Red and, most recently, Live in New York in 2002. In addition, she composed soundtracks for two of Spalding Gray’s films, and directed as well as starred in the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave. Some of Anderson’s quirkier projects include being a voice actor in the animated Rugrats Movie and writing the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on New York City. Her spoken-word and music-packed 1998 CD-ROM, Puppet Motel, allowed a sort of performance art concert to be experienced interactively at a computer, like a video game. (The experience was described by one amazon.com consumer reviewer as "spooky and mind-altering.") Anderson’s collaborators on projects have included beatnik icon William Burroughs, musician Peter Gabriel, comedian Andy Kaufman, and musician Lou Reed (her boyfriend). The Illinois-born Anderson, 57, studied art history at Barnard College, where she graduated magna cum laude. She went on to receive an MFA in sculpture from Columbia University. On November 3 at 7 pm, Laurie Anderson will participate in a forum and discussion on science and art at Pell Chafee Performance Center, 87 Empire Street, Providence. The moderator will be Todd Winkler, a composer and multimedia artist who teaches at Brown University. Admission is free. The following evening at 8 pm, she will perform at the VMAArts &Cultural Center, One Avenue of the Arts. Tickets are $12-$30; call 401.272.4862. _B.R.

Charismatic characters are hard to dislike, and Richard Feynman — the Zorba the Greek of particle physicists — sparkled like a Van der Graff generator. With QED (through October 29), playwright Peter Parnell hoped that letting us hang out with an amusing genius would be enough to engage and edified us.

In an enjoyable production by Rhode Island Theater Ensemble, this two hours of mostly monologue does keep us interested. But like an overly self-assured raconteur — or a professor more interested in entertaining students than challenging them — we are offered what is more a choppy pastiche of anecdotes and observations than an illuminating summation of a brilliant life. This is no Copenhagen, Michael Frayn’s A-bomb shop talk dazzler.

Feynman (Chris Perrotti) is going to die soon, and he knows it. He is talking to us in his office at the California Institute of Technology, this Nobel Prize-winning physicist who set himself apart as much for actually liking to teach students as for his intellectual accomplishments. The only other character is one of those students, Miriam Field (Elizbeth Keiser). She is nervy and persistent enough to, late into these two hours, get him to relax and open up this Saturday night.

The trouble with this play is that it has too many balls in the air. Even an adept showman like Feynman can’t keep them from blurring together, never mind the good offices of actor Perrotti and director CJ Racinski. He is on the phone with not one but two doctors, discussing whether to go through with an imminent operation — a tumor has wrapped around his remaining kidney. He is working on a speech he has to deliver on the subject of, with all possible humility, what we know. He is performing that night in South Pacific, as a Polynesian king, so we get details about the ham side of him. And so on.

We have to hear about his Los Alamos work on the atomic bomb and his maverick contributions to the Challenger disaster NASA report, of course. Fitting in there somewhere must be what many of us have come to hear, this famously clear-minded scientist elucidating the scientific method and perhaps even illuminating subatomic physics (QED stands for quantum electrodynamics). Having grown up as a beloved boy in a large Jewish family in the Queens, he was known as a straight talker. (Mercifully, Perrotti doesn’t mimic his thick New Yawk yawp.) This is the man who cut through all the televised NASA investigation verbiage with the single image of him dipping an O-ring, like the one that failed in 29-degree weather, into a glass of ice water, showing that it would then crack.

In the detailed set design by Bill Denise, full of characterizing knickknacks and rows of physics journals, a couple of Feynman’s favorite slogans join the equations on the chalkboard. "Know how to solve every problem that has been solved" and "What I cannot create I cannot understand" are central to his attitude.

Apparently in fear of boring us, Parnell chops up Feynman’s insights about science into such easily digestible remarks and slogans. Some are wonderful, such as his when he compares figuring out nature to figuring out chess rules by looking at games being played. But Feynman makes us greedy. We want him to sit down with the student and engage in more than superficial discussion. The excitable but thoughtful Feynman that Perrotti portrays could handle that. The quirky, playful student that Keiser creates could slow down for this. But Miriam Field is here merely as a flirting catalyst, to buoy Feynman’s spirits and cheer him up as he comes to terms with his overdue death.

What commercial prospects could this play have had on Broadway without the concluding life-affirming happy dance? Less. But the trick is to give that some poignantly ironic dignity rather than let it seem like Snoopy prancing on his doghouse. Here that culminating declaration-in-action comes across like something the playwright was pressing Feynman to do as much as what this exuberant man might actually decide.

In the Kazantzakis novel and film, Zorba said that men like himself should live a thousand years. Feynman will live eternally through his advances in physics. Biographies may explain that and also his great respect for the mystery of nature, an awe noted here but which QED is too busy to make us actually feel.