Review
The San Francisco Bay Guardian
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May 1, 2002
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L'Universe
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by Shalson
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After taking us on a virtual tour of the major theories of the universe, from Aristotle to Heisenberg, the Flying Karamazov Brothers use juggling to demonstrate how Einstein's desire for a unified field theory might have been compatible with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle after all-pretty heady stuff for four wacky guys who spend most of the evening cracking silly jokes and playing with high-tech toys designed by MIT's Media Lab. The dizzying result does less to explain the universe than to astound us with our inability to understand how they do their tricks any more than we understand quantum physics. But the metaphor does work to illustrate that the chaos and unpredictability of humans at play with one another have their own rhythmic beauty, perhaps even magic. One of the nicest parts of the performance comes when the entire stage is turned into a musical instrument that the performers "play" by wearing computers that detect acceleration and location to emit different tones and pitches, thus combining movement and technology to create music and dance. (Shalson)
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