STAGE WEST: "The Half-Life of Marie Curie" at New Village Arts Theatre

Leigh Scarritt (left) and Rachael VanWormer in "The Half-Life of Marie Curie."     Photo by Daren Scott

            Lauren Gunderson knows how to write about women and she knows how to write about science. That’s a simple – OK, overly simple – takeaway from her one-act “The Half-Life of Marie Curie,” currently onstage at New Village Arts Theatre.
            The story of an exceptional friendship between the Polish-born woman who discovered radium and polonium and British electrical engineer and suffragette Hertha Ayrton is an engrossing one, particularly as both women (especially Curie) are portrayed by Gunderson as real people with real flaws and not as super-scientists or super-women.
            At NVA, Kym Pappas directs Rachael VanWormer (as Curie) and Leigh Scarritt (as Ayrton) in a  90-minute two-hander that focuses on three years in the pioneering women’s lives. (It does go beyond that, all the way through each’s passing.)
          These are larger-than-life performances. VanWormer wrings every possible deeply embedded pang out of Curie’s torment over having become a target of public derision (and rejection by her own scientific community) because of (horrors!) an affair with a married Frenchman. As her confidante and crony who entices Curie to England for refuge, Scarritt is worldly wise and cheerfully indomitable.
            That these are portrayals likely more flamboyant than were the actual historical figures themselves – though who knows? It’s not like we have YouTube video of either woman as reference – gives dramatic and occasional comic life to “Half-Life” and, as Gunderson always does so deftly, demonstrates that science is a practice and a discipline of human beings and not merely Nature’s inexplicable wonderwork.
            Much of the first half of the play finds Ayrton tirelessly attempting to bolster and cheer up a joyless, agonizing Curie (with VanWormer appropriately dressed in black), pointing out in the process, rightfully so, that the treatment she’s getting from both the scientific intelligentsia and the hoi polloi would never be given to men.
            Ayrton’s frustration could become ours, as the Curie character comes off as resigned to victimhood. But just as Gunderson’s play finds its footing as it goes along, so does Ayrton’s unfailing resolve and good humor win Curie over, and the tone of “Half-Life” changes for the better, for characters and audience alike. The scene where the two get giddy on whiskey is a relief and a laugh.
            As VanWormer remarked to me in an interview I did with her for the San Diego Union-Tribune, these two women’s relationship was more than just that of BFFs. They had their differences and their set-to’s. This production’s major conflagration comes when Ayrton confronts Curie over the vial of radium she carries around with her like a beloved rosary. Harsh words are exchanged in the way that close friends never mean to exchange but inevitably do at some point in a complex and longtime relationship.
            Playing the far lighter of the two characters allows Scarritt to dominate many of the scenes in “Half-Life.” The fun she’s having comes close to wink-wink at times, but who can fault an actor for enjoying a role like this? The friend almost anyone, female or male, would love to have.
            VanWormer’s role demands much physicality – and more than a little coughing. But as she’s shown over the years in a variety of productions, she knows how to play figures from another time in history and give them resonance.
            Oh, yes. Speaking of resonance. A congratulatory bow to sound designer Harper Justus at NVA. Every tiny but significant effect, from radium transforming itself to the off-stage piano playing of Curie’s 7-year-old daughter, contributes to the production’s emotional atmosphere.
            Marie Curie, as the play tells us, died at 66 having lived a too-short life nevertheless marked by history-changing achievement. It was not lived, also as the play shows us, without pain but, happily, also not without a soulmate friend.
            “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” runs through Feb. 23 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.