Scientific research is a difficult thing to dramatize. Groups of scientists alone in labs, working on complex matters most of us couldn’t begin to understand — not exactly thrilling theater.
But when that research leads to the DNA double helix, the key to life, well, that’s certainly a story worth trying to stage. Add in a female scientist who advanced the research to the point of crucial discovery, but was then overlooked for credit in favor of her male colleagues, and by golly, you have something dramatic to work with.
In theory, at any rate.
Photograph 51, by Anna Ziegler, tells the story of Rosalind Franklin (Olivia Swasey), an X-ray diffraction specialist working at King’s College in London during the early 1950s race to map the structure of DNA.
Despite being promised her own research, Franklin is forced to work with fellow scientist and boss Maurice Wilkins (Ryan Kelly), a small c chauvinist willing to claim ownership of her work to gild his reputation. Her assistant, Ray Gosling (Alric Davis), may be a kinder, even comically goofy addition to the team, but he can do nothing to get her the respect she deserves.
The titular photograph refers to an X-ray image taken by Gosling under Franklin’s tutelage. Once the pair see it, they know they’ve struck gold as the photograph confirms the double helix structure of DNA. Rather than run with what she’s discovered, Franklin remains cautious, wanting to consider her findings with a perfectionist’s second and third think.
It’s this hesitation that allows her rivals at Cambridge University, James Watson (Ian Lewis) and Francis Crick (Calvin Hudson) to get a peek at the image and subsequently create the first comprehensive DNA model. It was a breakthrough that won them, along with Wilkins, the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and left Franklin’s name and contribution in the shadows.
The problem is, unlike the colorful three-dimensional double helix DNA model we eventually see on stage, Ziegler’s play gives us flatly drawn cartoons over character and dullness instead of drama.
We meet Franklin in the lab, which is fitting as in this telling she has no life outside it other than an unexplained off-stage trip to hike a mountain in Switzerland.
Steely, cold, no-nonsense, determined, dedicated, relentless, brilliant, confident, humorless – she’s all those things and nothing else. We get it, Franklin is a female scientist in a man’s world, she has to be tough. We certainly understand her fight and Swasey’s performance is a standout in the production.
But Ziegler treats the character as though she has no soul. No genesis. She drops Franklin into the story like a prickly pear and expects us to root for her simply because she’s the underdog.
But at least we respect her. It’s more than we can say for the male colleagues Ziegler presents us with.
For all of Franklin’s brilliance, her boss/partner Wilkins seems to do, well, nothing. He bumbles along, complains about having to work with Franklin, might even have a crush on her and not much else.
Dumbing Wilkins down to make Franklin look more impressive is a cheap trick and we’re not falling for it. We’re also not falling for Kelly’s performance which dips in and out of an English accent while failing to conjure the required emotion or urgency for the role.
As comic relief, Davis does get some well-deserved laughs as assistant Gosling, but it’s a shame that it’s often at the expense of his character’s shortcomings. Does no one in this lab other than Franklin deserve to be there?
We finally feel the presence of scientific chops from the Cambridge colleagues Watson and Crick but Ziegler sidetracks this with the pair’s obsession with women. Watson (an overly smarmy Lewis) can’t stop talking about his desire to have a woman and Crick (a nicely affable Hudson) is occupied with his unseen wife and her growing unwillingness to wait on him.
Again, we get it. The dudes rule this world. Ziegler’s hammer may be well-intentioned, but she bangs it so hard that the board cracks before the nail is even in.
Only American scientist, Don Caspar (Jason Duga reminding us why we’ve missed him on stage) feels like more than a setup. Enamored with Franklin’s work, he reaches out to her in a professional and later, personal manner. The letters they exchange, finally give us some character insight and a reason to warm to them both.
With such a problematic script, director Jennifer Decker does her best to make the staging the star of the show in the supremely intimate space. Three pentagon platforms fan out from the main stage providing gravitas to monologues or interesting spots for break-out scenes.
The show’s content may not feel substantial, but thanks to Decker, it runs like a fully loaded machine.
And it looks good. Good but a bit confusing. Danielle Hodgins’ set design is meant as a backdrop to the King’s College lab, yet looks more like a wood-paneled curiosity cupboard.
What are globes, plants, feathers, seashells, candles, and hat boxes doing in a scientific lab? Aesthetically, the design is handsomely attractive, but about as realistic feeling as the characters in the play.
“It isn’t that they got it first,” says Franklin when she learns the other team unveiled the double helix. “It’s that I didn’t see it.”
After all Ziegler’s attempts to make Franklin the lion, it’s a letdown to have the whole thing end not with a roar but rather a quiet self-admonishment. But then this Franklin never felt real to us anyway. Somewhere her ghost is roaring for real, we hope.
Phtograph 51 continues through April 30 at the Joe Frank Theatre of the Arts, 5601 Braeswood. For more information, call 713-729-3200 or visit erjcchouston.org/tickets. $20-$25.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
