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Memory plays tricks in ‘Incognito’

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Has this ever happened to you?

You are with friends, completely engaged in talk and about to make a point, and then — you go blank. You backtrack in your mind, you struggle and wonder if you’ve lost your wits while the conversation rolls on without you and then, mysteriously, somehow, you recover the thread, but by then the conversation has moved on and you are alone, now with a death-grip on your lost idea, wondering if you can re-insert it before it slips away again, or daring instead to risk a non-sequitur. 

Or maybe you never recover the thought at all.

Let’s face it, that everyday slip is only a start when it comes to brains, and how they might dysfunction or branch out into madness or fame. “Incognito” has one or two particular brains on its mind. 

This new play by Nick Payne, at the Manhattan Theatre Club, is a journey through the fog of the mind and also a hazy rendition of a cluster of circumstantial stories revolving in part around the post-mortem wanderings of Albert Einstein’s brain. (Yes, that brain. No matter how forgetful I might be, some things are sure to not slip away.)

Each of the four actors (Geneva Carr, Charlie Cox, Heather Lind and Morgan Spector) takes on a hefty panel of multiple roles. Director Doug Hughes underscores a dreamlike distance forged into the play by the random origins of its plotline, all fragments tossed from a basketful of complications.

“Incognito” offers a big challenge to the audience: Please follow this ricochet through time/space, while we also toss in the genius’s brain as a McGuffin to boot. Payne roams at will over this de-facto historical footnote. Einstein’s brain was indeed preserved and studied and divided and then circulated among scientists worldwide, and you yourself can even see a slice today at the legendary Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. 

Like shifts of memory, the play zooms in and out and roams over a palette of story. It sometimes lurches like a mind on a sleepy morning, with a dream lost in an odd unforgiving fade.

“Incognito” tumbles through thickets of broken connections — all deliberately engineered. The play is like a graphic novel, written on glass and then shattered. We see the fragments, vivid but broken. Take what you will.

An energetic lighting design by Ben Stanton and the neutral pedestal of Scott Pask’s set complement the brisk intensity of the splintered approach. Cathrine Zuber’s costumes are a splendid fit in their confident adaptability. Each actor wears only one outfit as the company zigzags through a gallery of misadventure, and we witness an ensemble of crowdsourcing that produces 20 distinct characters.

The furious pastiche style ultimately chops apart the action, a choice that does no service your own internal scorecard or to the unities of Aristostle, who would forgive you for disengaging from most of the characters. The actors toggle well from England to America and through their cavalcade of lively misfits. Many facets of the stories do shine through. It’s just tough to try to resurrect all that broken glass.

“Incognito” runs at the Manhattan Theatre Club Stage I through Sunday, June 26.

Incognito, Nick Payne, The ticket, James O’Connor

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