Serving up 'breakfast'

By Michael Antzis
Point Intern

	Coastal Point • RUSLANA LAMBERT Workers put together the setting for ‘Einstein’s Breakfast,’ showing this weekend at Bear Trap Dunes.

“Einstein’s Breakfast” is about the friendly relationship that develops between a lower-class, uneducated waitress and the man whom she is serving — scientific genius Albert Einstein. Schmidt carefully portrays both as problem solvers; just as Einstein must derive complex mathematical formulas, the waitress, a single mother, must find a way to put food on the table for her children.

The play is based on Schmidt’s own mother’s account of having served breakfast to Einstein — then a retired Princeton professor — on several occasions in 1958. While the two develop a relationship in the play, in reality Schmidt’s mother did not speak with Einstein, let alone recognize him. In fact, Schmidt’s mother, Virginia Kraus, thinking Einstein was homeless, paid for his three breakfasts at the Princeton, N.J., diner in which she was working.

“I am amazed to this day. My mother saw his rumpled clothes and his untied shoes, and thought that he was homeless,” said Schmidt.

Even after being told by the diner owner that Einstein was a well-known physicist, Kraus did not grasp the significance of the encounter. Had Kraus not seen Einstein’s picture on the cover of an autobiography that her son, Harold Schmidt, was reading years later, “Einstein’s Breakfast” might never have been written.

Likewise, Schmidt’s career as a playwright had a similarly serendipitous beginning; Schmidt was a figure-skating coach until the father of one of his skating students, a movie producer, suggested that he write plays. Taking his advice, Schmidt bought a book on how to write a screenplay and then wrote “Wrinkles,” a comedy.

Performed a year-and-a-half ago at Bear Trap Dunes, “Einstein’s Breakfast” will this year star the film and theater actress Maryellen Owens. Owens has recently appeared in a cameo role with Liam Neeson and Timothy Hutton in the film, “Kinsey,” and she co-wrote and starred in the film “Beaux & D’aria” which won the Audience Choice Award at Los Angeles’ 48 Hour Film Festival.

When Schmidt finished writing the play five years ago, he did not envision it as a musical, but he kept conjuring up songs to accompany certain parts of the play.

“I was driving with my son and I started singing this song, and the next day my son was singing the same song in my living room. It was really my son’s singing that convinced me that I could do the musical,” said Schmidt.

Schmidt described the music as contemporary. While he had the idea of what the songs would sound like and where the lyrics should be added, it was Doug Yetter of Clear Space Productions who took Schmidt’s melodies and put them into musical notation.

Schmidt is confident that the audience will enjoy his play. “I think that it is a sweet, touching play, and very heartfelt. You could be six and love this play, and you could be 70 and love this play.”

(“Einstein’s Breakfast” will be performed July 13-15. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. and are free and open to the public. For more information about the Free Theatre Festival, call 436-3005.)