When I was younger, I thought office politics happened only in offices, like in Mad Men (or, for another generation, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit). Then I went to work at a university hospital and began hanging out with physicians and researchers, often merrily referring to themselves as lab rats. After a while I began to learn that office politics went on in research laboratories too. (I regret to inform you that so did racism and sexism.)
It’s all on display in Photograph 51 which yet manages to be a charming, fascinating play. In what must be a first for the area, the play is being done by two different companies, West End Players Guild and a student production at Webster University. I saw the one at WEPG, now, as they point out, in their 104th year.
Anna Ziegler’s award-winning play talks about Rosalind Franklin, the chemist and x-ray crystallographer. She was taking pictures of molecules, in other words, including increasingly good pictures of DNA before the shape was clearly identified. Her work led directly to that identification. Dr. Franklin (Nicole Angeli) – the men in the play omit the honorific quite deliberately – has just arrived at King’s College London in 1951 to lead some research of her own when she discovers she’s been moved to work under Maurice Wilkins (Ben Ritchie) on a project of his. She’s none too happy about this and Wilkins is unaccustomed to women who speak up. Nevertheless, she persists, aided by a post-grad student, Ray Gosling (Ryan Lawson-Maeske). They begin working to make better radiological images of DNA. Another post-grad, Don Caspar (Alex Fyles), who’s at Yale, has her as a mentor and eventually gets a fellowship at Kings, thanks to Franklin. The problems with Wilkins continue. Who knows if it’s by accident or “accident” that he shows her 51st photo to James Watson (Will Bonfiglio)? Watson goes bounding off post-haste to his associate at Cambridge, Francis Crick (John Wolbers), with what he’s seen, the actual shape of DNA they’ve been unsuccessfully trying to imagine.
It’s a particularly notable performance from Angeli, as she controls Franklin’s emotions but subtly shows her thoughts. Ritchie, too, is controlled English but sputters and occasionally even dithers, albeit quietly, at the situation with this woman in his lab whose intelligence he both does and doesn’t recognize. The post-grad (who took the actual photo) Gosling, as shown to us by Lawson-Maeske, has some of the best lines in the show, which has a surprising amount of banter; he displays fine timing. Bonfiglio, who we’re used to seeing as a good guy, is wonderfully self-over-assured in the role of Watson, a guy who was indeed brilliant, but frequently socially inept and often, let us say in a bit of understatement, not a pleasant person. He apparently remained that way after he, Crick and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize. Franklin had died of ovarian cancer by the time the prize was awarded, but was omitted, it is said, because Nobels can only go to no more than three people for a single prize.
One doesn’t need to know about adenine and guanine or any of the technical story to appreciate Photograph 51. Ellie Schwetye has done a bang-up job directing this tightly scripted 90-minute jewel.
Photograph 51
through April 14
West End Players Guild
Union Avenue Christian Church
733 Union Blvd. (enter on Enright Ave.)