The Lightest Element

In the early years of the twentieth century, a bright young woman struggles against a sexist science establishment. Although respected intellectually, her revolutionary findings are mocked by senior colleagues only for them to be later stolen by the same men. She finds love but not without complications. She gains eventual success through sheer willpower and the assistance of men willing to fight her corner.

That might all sound a lot like Bonnie Garemus’ Lessons In Chemistry and more than a little fanciful but is the real-life story of English astronomy professor Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. Swapping Cambridge University (which, at the time, did not give degrees to women) for Cambridge, Massachusetts, we follow her career from precocious twenty-something to becoming the chair of her department. Along the way, she faces brazen misogyny at every turn, insidious briefings from her colleagues and the attention of the US government suspicious of her Russian husband and - by extension - herself.

Stella Feehily’s new play is not a complex work. Rather, its strength lies how plainly it lays out Cecilia’s travails and how she faces them head on. The stargazer, played here by Maureen Beattie, is painted in Churchillian hues, a fag in hand, facts to hand, fighting her foes in the boardroom and her office and taking to task those who cling to reactionary views on women’s roles (“it’s called a chairman for a reason” opines one of her fellow professors).

A fictional subplot is inserted here to curious effect. In the 1950s, young wannabe journalist Sally Kane (Annie Kingsnorth) is persuaded by her boyfriend Norman (a wonderfully devilish Steffan Cenyyd) to use an interview with Payne-Gaposchkin as a way to determine the academic’s political stance. Norman, working on behalf of the FBI in that blighted McCarthyite era, is suspicious that the English woman married to a Russian is a “pinko”. On the one hand, it's a meaty diversion which takes away from the central thrust of what is otherwise a decent biography; on the other, it allows us to see the more human side of Payne-Gaposchkin.

The terse standoff between scientist and interview has hints of Frost/Nixon as tries to subtly push Cecilia into declaring whatever communist allegiances she may have and, while well-written, leaves us pining to spend more time with both parties as well as Rina Mahone who brilliantly brings to spiky life Payne-Gaposchkin’s loyal assistant Rona Stewart.

With its tight script streaked with comic moments, Hampstead’s The Lightest Element is another example (along with last year’s excellent Anthropology) of thought-provoking science-themed works featuring a mostly-female body of actors and creatives. Both works deserve a transfer beyond the confines of North London and I hope they are revived here or elsewhere.

The Lightest Element continues at Hampstead Theatre until 12 October.