David Kaye excels as a monologue virtuoso in this fifty-minute solo performance at the Fringe Festival. While the pace occasionally lags, it is not due to any fault of his. Rather, the script offers little that couldn’t be gleaned from a quick Google or YouTube search. Kaye, a professor at the University of New Hampshire’s theatre and dance department, alongside Director Stephanie Voss, distills the life and legacy of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber to a fundamental question: was he “an angel of life or a demon of death?” This show could benefit from the fleshed-out treatment afforded to history-based productions like “The Diary of Anne Frank” or “Oppenheimer,” which employ a full cast and narrative structure instead of being narrated by those characters respectively.
…a compelling introduction, shedding light on a complex figure and his profound impact on history…Kaye’s stellar performance alone proves rewarding.
“The Haber Conundrum” delves into the complex life of German-Jewish chemist Fritz Haber, exploring his fraught relationships with family, faith, country, and science. By 1908, Haber had developed a method to artificially synthesize nitrogen from air molecules, a breakthrough credited with averting global food shortages predicted for 1930. However, he also pioneered the use of chemical gases as weapons during World War I and invented Zyklon B, a pesticide infamously used in the Holocaust gas chambers.
With a strong and consistent grasp of the German accent and donning a three-piece suit topped off with armless glasses, Kaye becomes a convincing Haber, narrating his life story in first person, and displaying an impressive range of acting prowess by also depicting Haber’s father and wife. Kaye’s poignant variations in tone, pace, vocal inflections, facial expressions and gesticulation hold the audience’s attention and carry them along. When Haber first breaks the N2 Nitrogen bond, Kaye helps us feel his joy and excitement as he ran from lab to lab shouting “we have ammonia!” When his father tells him he could end up a failure in university, we feel the admonishing tone as if we were the ones being scolded. When his wife speaks on how she gave up her journey toward a remarkable career in chemistry because of him, we feel her pain. When Kaye expresses Haber’s emotional turmoil at the outcomes of his life choices, and his love for his country and science, we develop a little more understanding. For the entirety of the monologue, Kaye is at the center of a circle of hard white light against a dimmed background. Voss’s use of alternating intensity of light as Kaye alternates between characters is ingenious.
For those unfamiliar with Fritz Haber, “The Haber Conundrum” offers a compelling introduction, shedding light on a complex figure and his profound impact on history. While the production doesn’t offer new insights to those already familiar with Haber’s story, Kaye’s stellar performance alone proves rewarding.
Running Time: Fifty minutes with no intermission.
“The Haber Conundrum” July 19-21, 2024 at Laughter Theater Space, Washington, D.C. The box office for Laughter is located at 1150 Connecticut Ave NW (next door to Laughter), Washington, DC 20036 (same block just a few doors down; look for the TV screens). For more information and to purchase tickets, please go online. For more information and to purchase tickets for the festival, which runs through July 21, 2024, go to the Capital Fringe website.
