Review: Center for Puppetry’s ‘Tesla vs. Edison’ blends science and wit in feat of performance

It is a necessity that audiences go see the fathers of invention clash in Tesla vs. Edison, the dazzling history-based show that has returned to the Center for Puppetry Arts through August 23.

Originally produced in 2023, the Suzi Bass Award-winning puppet show — written, designed and directed by Artistic Director Jason Hines — retells the story of the “war of the currents” in the 1880s and 1890s between rival inventors Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, which would determine the future of electricity. 

The show depicts how Edison, who created such devices as the light bulb and the phonograph, was a champion of direct current. By the time he met upstart Tesla, who immigrated from New York to work with him, Edison was well-established, stubborn and even arrogant. Tesla, full of ideas and eager to make his own name, experimented with alternating current. And when Edison is resistant to change, Tesla brings his ideas to a chief competitor, George Westinghouse, who exploits Tesla’s ideas to wage a full-scale battle in the court of public opinion against Edison, with lots of money and power at stake.

The way Hines’ show brings this history and its characters to beautiful life is particularly amazing. It is a feat of performance, choreography, design, technical artistry and mechanics. 

Four puppeteers are onstage telling the story. Sarah Beth Hester, Alex Burnette, Louis Kyper and Yankl (Jake) Krakovsky all embody sections of the nearly life-sized puppets for the title characters, working together to make them move and inhabit their world. 

The primary puppets are composed of joints and body parts resembling mechanical devices more so than human skeletons and muscles, which evokes so much about the themes of the piece. They are man and machine telling a story of both.

The Westinghouse puppet, by comparison, is a towering, bellowing villain — performed by Burnette wearing a costume that engulfs him and barely seems to fit on the stage.

Also, there are moments involving a pigeon love affair and interludes narrated by a miniature Mark Twain, adding much wit to the science on display.

Krakovsky and Kyper serve as Tesla and Edison’s main voice performers; both are skilled actors who bring layers to the dialogue. Tesla is a dreamer and a man out of place, and Krakovsky gives him a naiveté that works well. Meanwhile, Kyper’s Edison has an air of superiority and a weariness.

In one of the show’s most stunning moments, Hester plays an operatic soprano in a duet with herself on a phonograph record. She sings a portion of the aria live, and the quality of the performance is heavenly. Since it comes deep within a show where she and her fellow cast mates have been doing intensely physical work with precise timing while juggling dozens of characters, the moment is all the more impressive.

And then come the light saber fights, the Niagara Falls mist and even bolts of lightning onstage.

The sound design by Dolph Amick, set design by Ryan Sbaratta and lighting design from Liz Lee and David Reingold are top-notch.

You will never see a show like this anywhere else on any other stage. If you didn’t see it during its initial run, you do not want to miss it.

Tesla vs. Edison is a masterpiece of invention.

Where and When 

Tesla vs Edison is at the Center for Puppetry Arts through August 23. Tickets, $30.
1404 Spring St. NW.

::

Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.