By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Ryan Fagan
Rosalind (Lori Hunt) is a loner in her science research.
When Live Theatre Workshop gets serious, it really gets serious. The currently running production of “Photograph 51” by Anna Ziegler, directed by LTW’s artistic director Sabian Trout, is a fine piece of work as entertaining as it is thoughtful.
That title refers to an X-ray photo taken during the intense research by several scientists determined to crack the code for charting the structure of human DNA back in the early 1950s. The key to unraveling this puzzle is the recognition of DNA’s double helix structure.
In the play we see how tense the so-called team work is among the six scientists working in a dank underground lab at London’s King’s College. Each one fears one of the others will guess the answer first.
Ziegler focuses on the lone female in this group, an outsider in every sense of the word. She is Rosalind Franklin, played with tight-jawed intensity by Lori Hunt.
Singular in her focus, determined to receive the respect of her peers in the lab, but deeply suspicious of all their intentions, we would recognize today that Rosalind also suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome.
In her line of work, however, this could be a good thing because she had the ability to stay intensely focused on one very tiny aspect of life for an indefinite amount of time. While the others would want to take breaks, have lunch, tell a joke or two, Rosalind just kept on working at her research.
What makes “Photograph 51” so fascinating is the playwright’s dramatization of this swirling anxiety and jealousy among all six scientists, who knew full well the first person to click the answer would get all the credit, all the money and the Nobel Prize.
Without doubt, there was more than one rat race going on in this laboratory. The intensity of their bitterness recalled that quote often attributed to Henry Kissinger: Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
So you can imagine the level of viciousness when the Nobel Prize is at stake…not to mention, the ensuing fame and fortune.
Picture six miners with their picks and lanterns, all working in the same tunnel; each one expecting to discover that vein of gold.
Determined to act polite, but at the same time shouldering the others out of the way, these persons of science are not carrying out their assignments with much dignity.
Ziegler as playwright does get a little heavy-handed with the feminist messages, but this is a bruising game of egos that’s more about strategy than it is about gender. Rosalind’s inability to communicate well forces her into more of a corner.
So ultimately, was she cheated out of the credit her research deserved? Probably so. She did develop the techniques to take that x-ray photograph so remarkably clear that others could correctly interpret its meaning and announce “It’s a double helix structure.”
“Photograph 51” is a pure ensemble piece, with all five men sharing in the creation of this fascinating drama. They are Matt Brown as Ray, Matthew Copley as Don, Steve McKee as Francis, Nick Trice as James and Brian Wees as Maurice.
Performances continue at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through March 22 at Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd. Tickets are $18, with discounts available. Special additional matinee at 3 p.m. Saturday, March 22. For details and reservations, 520-327-4242, www.livetheatreworkshop.org
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