PHOTOGRAPH 51

 

I  could barely keep from screaming when I saw it: PHOTOGRAPH 51–an eye-opening play about yet ANOTHER unsung woman’s achievement: Rosalind Franklin, a scientist duped out of the NOBEL prize by Watson and Crick of double helix fame.  I will now forever think of them as double-crossers.

The play by Anna Ziegler tells the story of British biophysicist Doctor Rosalind Franklin, whose expertise in x-ray imaging resulted in photograph 51– which finally revealed the double helix structure of DNA. According to the playwright, the brilliant Franklin — a woman and a Jew– was refused admittance to the senior dining hall, was casually referred to as “Rosey” rather than “Doctor,” was regarded as an “assistant to” rather than a “partner of ” Doctor Maurice Wilkins played by Owen Doyle. Doyle manages to make Wilkins blindly sexist, infuriatingly befuddled, and sympathetic all at once.

Becky Webber as Franklin starts out a bit stiffly, then warms to the part conveying Franklin’s uncompromising spirit, independence, and intellectual rigor leavened with just enough humor and vulnerability for us not just to admire– but to really like her. (Check out a YouTube video tribute to Franklin set to Coldplay’s “Scientist.”)

Franklin’s dedication to empirical facts is shown to be a source of both her strength and her weakness. She NEVER jumped to conclusions– unlike Watson and Crick, here played by Jason Powers and James Bocock like science cowboys–recklessly, creatively speculating, willng to go out on a limb BEFORE having the evidence.

It’s an interesting dilemma. The Nobel Prize-winning pair intuited the shape of the double helix, but couldn’t prove it. Franklin could prove it– but didn’t risk imagining. And having been robbed of the credit for her research on previous collaborations with male scientists, Franklin took no chances; she wasn’t inclined to share.  She was of course pilloried for the very lack of collegiality which she was routinely denied. It was her downfall; others– through nefarious means– had access to her research, while she did NOT have access to theirs.

There’s a bit of a romantic undercurrent at play here as well, and it makes things interesting in the way that it shakes the men off their foundations. The play is simply staged  and clearly structured. I grew a bit tired of the flatly lit, cardboard-like set, but all of that is minor compared to the audacity of the story.  I can’t think of a better tale to tell in the month of March– Women’s History Month. It made me angry and I want it to make you angy too. That’s what I call March Madness.

DON’T MISS  “PHOTOGRAPH 51”Extended  by popular demand through March 18 at the Central Square Theater and presented by the NORA THEATRE COMPANY.