Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach was amazing on Sunday. I even almost made it through the five full hours but about 40 minutes before the end I just couldn’t sit anymore. 

The incredible thing about the piece is that it is so different. It’s completely unlike anything else I have seen on stage. The fact that it is five hours long, extremely repetitive in sound as well as motion and without any clear plot is a big part of that.

I know this sounds utterly unattractive but in fact it is exactly the opposite. It’s like being in someone’s head or in a different world. Your pulse slows down, you enter some sort of trance (may even nod off for a second only to awake again in that strange place) and the play speaks to you in a language that it teaches you at the same time.

I’d try to catch a performance if you can. Upcoming dates and locations are here. It’s off to Toronto next, then New York, Berkeley, Mexico, Amsterdam and Hong Kong.

— From London.