By Michele Markarian
‘Photograph 51’ – Written by Anna Ziegler. Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Kristin Loeffler, Scenic Designer; Chelsea Kerl, Costume Designer; Elizabeth Cahill, Sound Designer; Aja M Jackson, Lighting Designer. Presented by The Nora Theatre Company, 450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge through April 15.
Rosalind Franklin (Stacy Fischer) came of age as a scientist during the 40s and 50s, when it was unusual for young women to pursue such a path. 1951 finds the x-ray chrystallographer in a research lab at King’s College, London, where she is assigned the task of working on x-ray diffraction (don’t panic; there is a wonderful glossary of terms in the show’s program). Franklin finds herself in a boys’ club, where her colleague, the awkward Maurice Wilkins (Barlow Adamson) decides to dine in the male-only dining room on his new lab partner’s first day, rather than accompany her to lunch. Unsurprisingly, this gets them off on the wrong foot.
But Franklin is not a particularly charming or friendly colleague herself. She prefers to do her research alone, sporadically using her poor, beleaguered PhD student, Raymond Gosling (Josh Gluck), whose instincts are to pacify both laboratory doctors. Fellow scientist Francis Crick (John Tracy) and his assistant James Watson (Michael Underhill), friends of Wilkins, are curious to know what Franklin is up to. Perhaps – because they’re men and more confident – they decide to put out their own model of DNA structure, which is ridiculed for its inaccuracies. Poor Franklin, meanwhile, plugging away meticulously, won’t even construct a model of her research until she is 100% certain. “If you go forward with this life, you can never be wrong”, her father tells her when she embarks on her career, and this deliberation, along with her sealed-off personality, seems to be her undoing. “Do you think if you give an inch, we will take a mile?” Wilkins asks her. In the end, it doesn’t matter – they take a mile, anyway.
It’s a tense, engaging play, made more so by the tense, sterile set design by Kristin Loeffler, which resembles a laboratory. It’s also peppered with dry British humor. I am not sure if it’s the playwright’s intent, the director’s intent, or my own imagination, but as an audience member, I too felt like a scientist, albeit a social scientist, eager to see what the actors and their interactions would do to one another. At the heart of the play is the relationship between Wilkins and Franklin. Poor ineffectual Wilkins, who’s as deliberate with his emotions as Franklin is with her research. An illustrative anecdote is told by Crick of how, in college, he sat across from a female scientist and told her that he loved her, but did nothing else. After a long silence, she got up and left.
Adamson and Fischer are well matched as sparring partners. Adamson gives Watkins a sorrowful yet likeable demeanor. Somehow, one manages to feel sorry for him, as he has no idea how to truly reach his colleague. The pathos Adamson displays as he hopefully presents Franklin with a box of chocolates is heartbreaking (“Kindness always works with women, Gosling” he says, as confident a moment as he’ll ever have). Fischer’s Franklin is clipped, professional, and at times, vulnerable. Her closeness with another PhD, Donald Gaspar (Jesse Hinson), is touching, especially as she can’t really express herself. Gluck is terrific as Gosling, who seems to just want everyone to get along. Tracy and Underhill are energetic as dueling scientists Crick and Watson, although Underhill is a little too gleefully nefarious to have in anyone’s lab.
Like any good piece of work, Photograph 51 gives the viewer a curiosity about its subjects. As you’re leaving – or entering – the theater, take a look at the photographs across from the headshots of the cast, then of the real scientists the play is written about. It’s just one more layer to the life that The Nora Theatre brings to Photograph 51. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.centralsquaretheater.org/
