Chatham Life & Style

By Dustin K. Britt, managing editor

The Half-Life of Marie Curie ★★½ 

Switchyard Theatre Company

PSI Theatre at the Durham Arts Council

DURHAM, NC

July 13-17, 2022

Learn more and purchase tickets at switchyardtheatrecompany.org

After a successful inaugural run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Chapel Hill this spring, Switchyard Theatre Company is hosting the area premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s The Half-Life of Marie Curie. Gunderson’s words are not new to triangle audiences, with productions of I and You, The Taming, Natural Shocks, and Émilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight playing here over the last few years, sometimes by multiple companies.

This 2019 Off-Broadway feminist crowd-pleaser observes a series of intimate conversations between double Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie and Hughes Medal-winning scientist and suffragist Hertha Ayrton. While the conversations are largely imagined, their content is firmly rooted in historical fact. Gunderson hones in on the public’s rancorous, misogynistic reaction to the widowed Curie’s year-long affair with physicist Paul Langevin: a vitriolic combination of slut-shaming and antisemitism (the right-wing press said she was Jewish; she was not). This real-life scandal serves as a foundation upon which Marie and sisterly Hertha can commiserate and combat throughout the play. 

Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, famously kept a sample of radium, her most famous discovery, on her person for most of her professional life. Gunderson’s play provides a constant reminder of it: a vial of the radioactive substance around her neck on a gold chain. Though its potentially dangerous effects had been noted, she carried it proudly and dearly as one might carry a locket or religious idol--a reminder that both her heart and her prayers belong to Chemistry, not Christ.

In Switchyard’s production, seasoned performer Mary Rowland embodies the spirit of fiery, profane Hertha Ayrton quite effectively. As per usual, Rowland is highly engaging and a joy to watch. Her bombastic, confident, and eloquent delivery provides the play’s comedic and maternal core.

Local favorite Samantha Corey takes on the ailing Marie Curie. Corey is believable, capturing Marie’s physical maladies and ever-present despair with subtle honesty. But this cinematic subtlety exists in a different world from Rowland’s theatrical antics. This may be partly Gunderson’s doing; these are characters with different experiences and often opposing perspectives. Historically, they aren’t always in a shared headspace. But here and now, in this theatre, they are in a shared performance space. We’re enraptured by Hertha, but not Marie, partly because Gunderson gives her all the best lines. The duo’s drunken seaside conversations, near the play’s end, are the only moments that we glimpse Curie as a breathing, living person and the two seem to hold level ground.

There are myriad psychological and social justifications for Curie’s cold defensiveness. This is a woman undergoing loss, illness, defeat, and trauma. And it’s not her job to be liked. But as a fictionalized, theatrical creation, we must connect with her on a deeper level than what Gunderson provides in this brief play. It’s the curse of many a heady artist: it’s real, but it ain’t interesting.

This play has been produced as an audio drama. And it works just as well because the words are so perfectly written and rendered. You needn’t fuss with it. Thus, Noelle Azarelo’s direction is welcomely kinetic, but overly distracting. Marie and Hertha’s stage placements are usually effective--they address the audience on opposing sides until they come together nearer the play’s end. But within conversational scenes they cover too much physical ground, rarely resting to connect and engage each other in an intimate way.

During scene transitions, stagehands visibly and--in interaction with the actors--shuffle set pieces and props around. This is intriguing and appropriately metatheatrical; it’s a very hip move. However, the stage becomes overpopulated and noisy enough to interrupt the play’s otherwise precisely-crafted rhythms, complete with a couch and booze bottles moving to inexplicable places. The jarring, momentary inclusion of a video of Curie swimming underwater is a bold move, but further suggests that Azarelo doesn’t trust her audience to engage with the text on its own merits.

Kristie Kennedy’s period props are well-suited, as are Laura J. Parker’s exquisite costumes. Curie’s severe black dress, shoes, and buckled belt reflect her persistent stage of mourning and enhance her cold demeanor. Even her traveling hat and coat are shades of austere black and gray as she carries her dark mood with her. It isn’t until she bathes in the cleansing waters of the British sea that she dons a lavish dove-white robe, loaned by hospitable Hertha. 

By stark contrast, Hertha’s cream-colored dress and golden-tasseled belt boast her decidedly brighter disposition and her rejection of the widow’s uniform. A thin neck tie hints at her nonconformist attitude toward gender expectations. It’s rare to see such deep character development, and clear period indication, in so few wardrobe pieces.

Overall, The Half-Life of Marie Curie proves itself a strong comedy, even if the (play? production?) does a disservice to Curie herself, painting her with as monochromatic a palette as history so often does. The production is certainly fun to watch, with two capable actors sinking their teeth into Gunderson's delightfully witty words. But the written characters, and their living interpretations, are notably unbalanced. -- D.K. Britt

Dustin K. Britt (he/they), managing editor, holds a Master of Arts in Education from East Carolina University and has worked as a theatre maker in the triangle for more than twenty-five years as a director, actor, stage manager, playwright, producer, designer, and teacher. He specializes in student, community, and professional theatre, dance, cinema, music, and comedy as well as arts accessibility and queer politics. Dustin is a script reader for the National Playwrights Conference and adjudicates festivals and student productions regularly. He is a jury member at the Nevermore Film Festival, and sits on the boards of the OutSouth Queer Film Festival and the Durham Art Guild. His writing has appeared in Indy Week, Carolina Parent, Pedal Fuzz, and Chatham Life & Style, where he has written since its founding in 2018.