“Silent Sky,” Lauren Gunderson’s remarkably human play about the hard science of astronomy, brims with emotion. Currently staged all over the country and now by Merely Players through Sunday, the local production also unearths comedic groundwater.
If you go
WHAT: “Silent Sky,” a play by Lauren Gunderson, Merely Players, directed by Mandy Irons
WHEN: 7 p.m. today, Friday, Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: Merely Underground, 789 Tech Center Drive
TICKETS: Variable. If sold out, get on wait list
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.merelyplayers.org or call 749-8585
From the opening scene, an argument between siblings Margaret and Henrietta Leavitt (the brisk and endearing Abby Kubicek and the fiercely determined Tara Demmy), director Mandy Irons establishes a quick pace with a high level of intensity.
Life-changing decisions ripple through this true story set at the turn of the last century. Henrietta wants to pursue her dream of scientific research. What we now label the “work-life balance,” takes on an interesting trajectory. Lest we forget, in 1900, American women generally didn’t aspire beyond the kitchen.
The play unspools in short, often overlapping scenes as Henrietta, a Radcliffe graduate, leaves home for a job at Harvard’s prestigious observatory – data collection in contemporary terms. Immediately, Gunderson introduces obstacles with sharp takes on gender and power discrepancies.
Henrietta encounters rigid male and female hierarchies through three characters: Annie Cannon, her immediate boss, (a blunt and brisk Jeannie Wheeldon); a more congenial peer, Willamina Fleming (Maureen May with a light Scottish brogue); and Peter Shaw, a mid-level research assistant (the inimitable Geoff Johnson who corrals his comedic instincts and masters Peter’s nerdy awkwardness). All three reference the never-seen but powerful project head, Dr. Charles Pickering. But it is Peter who delivers deadlines and introduces the possibility of romance into Henrietta’s life.
Other productions, like last year’s outings in Creede or the Utah Shakespearean Festival, tackled the challenging technical demands of a story about astronomical discoveries in grand ways. The play requires a split set for the home and Harvard, work-life issues, plus the illusion of a sea voyage, not to mention our illustrious starry firmament.
Credit technical director Charles Ford and his creative team for turning the low-ceilinged Merely Underground into a workable performance area. Ford has divided the stage into three minimalist spaces, one for the modest clergyman’s home, one for a scientific laboratory and one representing the cosmos. A simple bookcase and piano create Henrietta’s family home. A half-arch back window serves as a site for innumerable projections that visually support storytelling demands.
Costumers Megan Sander and Kathleen McGee provide suits, dresses, elaborate hats and a Suffragette scarf to pin down the period. To signal time passing, the playwright inserts subtle verbal cues, so pay attention.
Henrietta’s discovery centered on a new way to measure astronomical distances. Her work changed scientific thinking about the universe. Be assured, Gunderson gives the hero her moment of discovery.
“What’s now commonly called Leavitt’s Law is still taught in college astronomy courses,” writes Kirk Johnson in The New York Times obituary series titled “Overlooked.” “It underpinned the research of other pioneering astronomers whose work in the years after World War I demolished long-held ideas about our solar system’s place in the cosmos.”
Throughout “Silent Sky,” Gunderson weaves multiple plot threads and take us into the future. Director Irons has crafted a seamless production with only a few, momentary ruptures in the fabric of the play. At the first matinee, the powerful conclusion seemed rushed and needed some air. Even an extended blackout would enable the audience to take in the play’s larger intentions.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
