Hollywood Fringe Festival Theatre Review: An Evening with Marie Curie: Rogue Scientist

I grew up hearing the name “Madame Curie,” which summons a salaciousness befitting a woman who runs a brothel.  Rather ironically, her more patriarchal contemporaries probably preferred it that way.  When you pronounce “Marie Curie" together, by a stretch, it sounds like it belongs on the Periodic Table of Elements, a place where the intelligent and ambitious pioneer felt most at home.  Fittingly, An Evening with Marie Curie: Rogue Scientist is a reclamation of her accomplishments and what she struggled with to achieve them.  The full-length play (with intermission) opens with some tinkling piano keys accenting a vile of glowing green radium illuminating the otherwise pitch-dark performance space.  The lights edge up slightly to reveal the title character (Rebecca Lynn Morales) in this educational one-person show.

Giving herself the spotlight she never enjoyed during her life, Curie begins to guide us through her biography, highlighting pivotal moments that led to her discovery of radium and polonium, mobile X-rays, as well becoming the only person to win Nobel prizes in two different scientific fields.  She conjures up memories of her childhood reenacting exchanges with her father and sister, sometimes employing the voice of a little girl or reading letters.  She laments familial deaths due to diseases with no cure at the time, as well as shares her early entrepreneurial, philanthropic spirit when she created an alliance with a daughter of a family she was a governess for to teach impoverished Poles to read.  She also believed science would lift everyone of all economic classes to a higher plane of existence. 

Curie recounts the Russian occupation of the defeated Poles, thanks to advances in technology that rewarded those with the power to utilize them.  History is written by the winners, but those with a voice no matter how small can always choose to find the truth that slips through the cracks and expose it in whatever medium they find available--quite often being the theatre.  Being oppressed for her Polish citizenry, as well as her gender, she carries heavy chips on her shoulder next to the ringing in her ears that plagues her throughout the production.  She struggled with her interests contrasting what was permitted for her gender, as well as nationality.  Her mammaries and ovaries would lead her to the more progressive France.  She first had difficulty assimilating to Parisian life.  Not having time for superfluous affairs, Curie and her passion had the cards double-stacked against her.  “Mortality was my ambition’s only unconquerable foe.”  Curie couldn't be coy or immerse herself in a culture foreign to her which distracted her from her passionate Bohemian love of science—a predictable and controlled discipline and her only escape.

Marie Curie, the play and character, aren’t easy to adjust to, as writer/director G.S. Morales keeps the audience at a clinical distance.  Curie’s sense of humor and stiff demeanor require patience and a keen ear.  “Asinine troglodytes” is a typical example of her frustration expressed through sarcasm. She had a stick so far up her butt, Lilith Sternin Crane could give her lessons in letting down the black curls piled atop her head.  But she doesn’t care what you think about her and scoffs at those who treated her differently because she was female, as well as Polish.  Yet, she will periodically soften a little and address her modern audience with an anachronism such as, “Don’t hate.”  

Rebecca Lynn Morales as Marie Curie, Rogue Scientist

Dressed in a rigid black smock-frock, Morales carefully modulates her line delivery consistently with an authentic accent.  It’s only when Curie’s professor plays matchmaker and invites her to a tea with future husband and work partner Pierre, does her brittle exterior begin to crack and the second half cashes in on the dry foundation Act I spent building.  She gushes over the first date spent in a lab “in complete silence.”  Beautiful Gothic Chandeliers hang from the ceiling of the guerrilla black box theatre unassumingly located on Formosa in West Hollywood just down a block from Trader Joe's.  The simple set includes Curie’s lab table packed with beakers, candles, a scale and lamp.  She’ll often take a seat at her rocking chair next to an end table propping up a few portraits; a wooden box filled with books stuffed underneath. 

The emotional payoff at the end comes by way of tragedy.  Her work was a double-edged sword that both gave her the love of her life, broke her heart, and ultimately destroyed her.  Curie not only pays historical tribute, but offers her emotional redemption.  She was not only subjected to inequality by her peers, but struggled with her own personal demons.  It’s a fully realized play and performance and a lesson for us all.  The more we get to know the scientist, the more we understand her prudish and curmudgeonly disposition to be a product of her times and upbringing.  Connecting her work to humanity as the play goes on, we get closer to her core, where lies a huge heart that fueled her and civilization forward. 

Curie plays June 14th and 21st, 8 PM at The Actors Company.  You can buy tickets here.