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theatre review

The De Chardin ProjectMichael Cooper

The De Chardin Project, a thoughtful new play made exquisite thanks to sensitive, soulful direction by Alan Dilworth, aims to find the missing link between religion and science.

Playwright Adam Seybold digs for it in the life and works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a Jesuit priest and paleontologist who was part of the excavation team working on the Peking man site in the 1920s and 1930s making discoveries that shored up the theories of human evolution.

Upon entry into Theatre Passe Muraille, de Chardin (Cyrus Lane) is found lying face-down on the stage – here transformed into an elevated platform full of secret compartments by designer Lorenzo Savoini.

As de Chardin regains consciousness (and the play begins), a mysterious woman (Maev Beaty) greets him with a series of riddles; he is having a cerebral hemorrhage and she is there to excavate the layers his life before he dies, revisiting key moments in the development of his ideas about the intersection of spirituality and science that would eventually be posthumously published in his bestselling book, The Phenomenon of Man.

These formational events include participating in paleontological digs in Egypt as a young man; his time as a stretcher-bearer during the First World War; and his eventual exile to China after becoming persona non grata in Rome due to his controversial writings about Original Sin.

In Beijing, de Chardin also meets an artist and divorcée named Lucile Swan – and the play develops a brief interest in matters of flesh and blood. But Seybold has a keener ear for the metaphysical than the physical; his script does a fine job of distilling complex ideas down into easily digestible dialogues – even if these do often sound more Socratic than dramatic.

There's a formal, almost stilted quality to the writing – accentuated by Lane's distanced portrayal of de Chardin. He may be watching his life flash before his eyes, but he rarely seems emotionally engaged with the process.

Most of the warmth here comes from Beaty's skilled portrayal of a series of men and women who pop into de Chardin's life. She has a enjoyably jaunty quality as Canadian paleoanthropologist Davidson Black and is seductive as Swan – even if she never quite manages to pull our hero away from his vow of chastity.

At one point, de Chardin quotes Revelations to explain the uneasy space in which his life's work sits: "Because thou are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth." The De Chardin Project finds its dramatic tension in the serious societal divide between science and religion – with Rome playing the primary villain, even though, at this point, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is more embraced by Catholic thinkers than scientific ones. The Phenomenon of Man and its musings about humanity's evolution towards a collective consciousness have been mocked by the likes of Richard Dawkins, while Benedict XVI embraced de Chardin's work when he was pope.

Pope Francis's recent comments to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that God was not "a magician, with a magic wand" were treated as revolutionary by the secular press. For non-Catholics, the treatment of Galileo still casts a long shadow in how they view the church. Few are aware of de Chardin's writings – or that the Big Bang Theory was first posited by Georges Lemaître, another Jesuit priest.

This story of how religion and science do not have to be at war – and, indeed, have not always been at war does need to be told. Seybold's play as moving, in its way, as the Planispheric Astrolabe on display at the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic arts and culture in Toronto – a scientific instrument from the 14th century that startlingly has inscriptions in Arabic, Latin and Hebrew.

The De Chardin Project may have a clichéd structure and creaky moments, but its restrained writing grows on you. This is in no small part thanks to the monastic metaphysical atmosphere conjured by Dilworth along with Savoini and sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne. A single light bulb hanging from the ceiling becomes a symbol of the human spirit – and the revelation of a room full of them at the end is magical. The penultimate scene is the most powerful, however, as de Chardin explains to a woman in pain visiting his New York apartment that his study of the universe's unlikely path from the Big Bang to human consciousness has led him to believe that: "In spite of everything, we are lucky." I left Seybold's play with the same feeling.

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