FLAT EARTH THEATRE, despite its playfully antediluvian name,
is carving out a niche for itself, discovering lovely plays about women of
science. DELICATE PARTICLE LOGIC by Jennifer Blackmer (pulsing through Oct. 13th)
places atomic physicist Lise Meitner (a tour de force by Christine Power) at
the epicenter of the unearthing of nuclear fission… for which her male
laboratory partner, the noted chemist Otto Hahn (a solid Thomas Grenon) received
the Nobel Prize. (You may remember Flat Earth’s extraordinary production of SILENT
SKY from last season, about the women of the Harvard Observatory who weren’t
credited for the stars they discovered.)
In Blackmer’s ingenious memory play, Meitner and Hahn join
forces to find the next new element… and beat out the rest of the field, which
included Enrico Fermi, for the bragging rights. Everyone, it seems, was
bombarding radium and uranium to find heretofore unknown heavier elements. Meitner
suggested to Hahn that what they were, or rather, weren’t seeing, were lighter
elements emerging with unstable centers, and those center nuclei would yield
infinite energy when bombarded. Please insert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
here because I, not being a scientist, can only grasp that splitting these
molecules creates fission and fission is essential for a very, very large
explosion… like the horrific bombs unleashed on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
It is now widely accepted that Meitner and Hahn should have
shared in the accolades. Blackmer ingeniously places Meitner in the center of a
tiny emotional sphere as well, with Hahn and his wife (a glorious performance
from Barbara Douglass) swirling in various combinations. We first meet Edith
Hahn in a sanitarium of sorts, where she has been committed for hurling a vase
at her husband! When she is visited by Meitner, the two reminisce as if they
were old friends. We’re given several versions of the past to choose from,
charming recreations, which, like Edith’s water colors, float in undulating
memory pools.
Blackmer is extremely kind to Hahn, painting him as an
affectionate lab partner to Meitner, even helping her escape from the Nazis.
However, the playwright intimates that the two may have been more. Meitner
calls him Hahnchen, the “chen” indicating intimacy, perhaps only ‘wished for’
on her part. And he may have been nudged, the playwright hints, to accept sole
ownership of the Nobel. You decide once you’ve weighed all the dramatic evidence.
That’s what’s so fascinating about Blackmer’s play, that all this information has
been filtered through time and fragile recollections.
Director Betsy S. Goldman’s shimmering
production is enhanced exponentially by Christine A. Banna’s dancing
projections (from sparkling snow to theoretical formulae which flow right over
the actors) and PJ Strachman’s shadowy, evocative lighting. Kudos to Flat Earth
for again offering performances with American Sign Language interpreters.
As I was leaving the theater, bemoaning Meitner’s fate, a
friend reminded me of the wonderful Nobel news of last week. Even as half the
Senate was dismissing a woman’s testimony and embracing a judge’s lies, two
women were recognized by the worldwide scientific community. Frances H. Arnold
(and two men) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Donna Strickland won the
Nobel for Physics. Flat Earth Theatre calls us to remember all the women who
have stood up over the centuries. Thanks, Flat Earth.
