Play Reading

A Picasso
by Jeffrey Hatcher

Last night I attended a reading of the play A Picasso by Jeffrey Hatcher at Timeline Theatre. This was the first in a series of three play readings as part of the current play reading series by Timeline entitled "Timepieces". If the others (later in the Spring of 2010) are as good as this one we are all in for a great treat; for the reading last night was a riveting piece of theater that blended history and art in a brief one-act play.


This 2003 award-winning play from the author of "Tuesdays with Morrie" is set in Paris during the height of the German Occupation. Pablo Picasso is interrogated by the beautiful and mysterious Miss Fischer who has been hired by the Gestapo. In this cat-and-mouse game of intrigue, Picasso is forced to authenticate three paintings, each assumed to be "a Picasso." In this timeless collision between art and politics, an enticing tension begins to mount with art, sex, and the lure of power at its core. David Parkes played the role of Picasso and Kathy Logelin was Miss Fischer, during the play the dialogue develops several high points of tension as the discussion goes back and forth, presumable with Nazi soldiers in a room nearby. The play builds to a clever twist of an ending - and ending which occurs quite suddenly as a relief to the tension of the evening. The direction by Rachel Walshe was excellent and the evening was ended with a brief discussion led by P. J. Powers, Timeline Artistic Director, and included the cast, director and the dramaturg, Joshua Altman. It was an delightful evening of theater, art and learning for us all.