Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Lauren Gunderson’s conventional THE HALF-LIFE OF MARIE CURIE features a pair of passionate performances that do their trailblazing subjects proud

• By drediman
• December 22, 2019
• No Comments

Kate Mulgrew and Francesca Faridany in Audible Theater’s production of “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” by Lauren Gunderson at the Minetta Lane Theatre. Photo by Joan Marcus.

In recent years, Audible Theater has been assembling a constellation of wonderfully performed, usually starry Off-Broadway solo shows (to date, I’ve seen five of their productions: Harry Clarke, Girls and Boys, Sakina’s Restaurant, Proof of Love, and The Way She Spoke). Thankfully, Audible Theater has the resources to subsequently preserve these performances in commercial audio recordings (“audio theater”, if you will). Although Lauren Gunderson’s The Half-Life of Marie Curie isn’t technically a one-woman play – the piece features a cast of two – it falls pretty much in the theater company’s wheelhouse of presenting compelling portraits that enlighten the rich inner lives of their characters.

The play commences with a distraught Marie Curie, who has just been publicly and professionally denounced for her personal indiscretions. Despite being named after the brilliant Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist, the play also gives vigorous life to engineer and feminist Hertha Ayrton, who travels to France to her friend’s aid, smuggling Curie with her back to England to help her recover from her depression. Even if Ms. Gunderson’s play feels just a tad too conventional and tidy for these trailblazing women – some passages register as somewhat too obviously “stagey” – the performances more than make up for any shortcomings.

At the heart of the production are a pair of magnificent performances by Francesca Faridany as Curie (who starred on Broadway in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and Kate Mulgrew (of “Orange Is the New Black” fame) as Ayrton; both do their subjects proud. Although Ms. Mulgrew is undeniably commanding in the role, it’s Ms. Faridany’s work that is the highlight of the production. Indeed, her performance locates the pulsating passion and fierce intellect that drives Curie with such certainty that it nearly took my breath way. Although Audible Theater shows were designed to be listened to first and foremost, The Half-Life of Marie Curie has nonetheless been given a solid, accomplished staging by director Gaye Taylor Upchurch.

RECOMMENDED

THE HALF-LIFE OF MARIE CURIE
Off-Broadway, Play
Audible Theater / Minetta Lane Theatre
1 hour, 25 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 22