Boy, did I feel numb leaving The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci at the Old Globe. This co-production with Goodman Theatre is a creation of Chicago’s own Mary Zimmerman, who has perfected dazzling theatrical innovations throughout her career. She is best-known for her trademark cheeky and humorous twists on the classics: The Arabian Nights (my favorite); The Odyssey; The White Snake; and especially Metamorphoses, which won Zimmerman a 2002 Tony for Best Director. Yet unlike these works, in which she employs phantasmagorically wicked stagecraft to highlight the story at hand, Leonardo has no story.
Adeoye and Andrea San Miguel
Here, we have an octet of Leonardos, played by a diverse cast comprised of artists who are masters of song, reciting prose, and agile movement, literally reading from the Italian Renaissance master’s writings. Largely adapted from his copious notebooks (of which there are said to be thousands of pages), Zimmerman’s work — originally staged in 1993 — lays out the many obsessions of this remarkable polymath, compulsive observer, and indefatigable inquisitor of the natural phenomena that were essential to his work as an artist, inventor, scientist, philosopher and more.
The cast of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The actors — Adeoye, Christopher Donahue, Kasey Foster, John Gregorio, Anthony Irons, Louis Lamson, Andrea San Miguel, and Wai Yim — come across like graduates of Juilliard and the London Academy of Dramatic Arts, ones who have mastered every theater technique a classical performer needs to know; they impress in their strength and prowess and presence. They maneuver around Scott Bradley’s brilliant set design depicting a 16th-century workshop — vast walls of giant wooden file cabinets whose “drawers” periodically slide open to reveal countless different objects, as if they are a three-dimensional version of the notebooks themselves, made especially stunning by a painting of Turin in the background.
Wai Yim, Adeoye, Andrea San Miguel, and Louise Lamson
The writings are recited as the eight actors visually demonstrate his observations, principles, analyses, and reflections, on topics as diverse as painting and sculpture, architecture, anatomy, physics, and engineering. It’s actually not difficult to take in his natural and scientific principles at first. But a half-hour into the presentation, it started to lose me. Because we don’t have enough time to absorb the material and reflect on it, there’s nothing to connect with. Sadly, with all of Leonardo’s brilliance, the gorgeous stage pictures, and a desire to be at one with the experience, ennui sets in as the show feels damn near inconsequential and definitely wearisome. Besides a scene that amazingly displays how perspective works, and a line about how math is easy (really?), there’s very little I remember. It’s a shame that we don’t delve more into who Leonardo the man was. But that’s not what Zimmerman was going for.
The Cast
So when the notebooks were demonstrated with humor, especially through sensual body language, it aroused me from my taedium theatrum. Otherwise, sadly, I experienced a sorrowful detachment from the actors, as there were no emotional associations. For all the genius and art and intellectualism at hand, too much of it was arid and academic. What I did love was the reminder that mankind once created amazing things just by observation and experimentation, instead of sitting on our asses letting Google and social media think for us.
John Gregorio, Kasey Foster, Andrea San Miguel, and Adeoye
photos by Jim Cox
Kasey Foster and Christopher Donahue
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
The Old Globe
Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage
1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park, San Diego
ends on February 26, 2023
for tickets, call 619.234-5623 or visit The Old Globe