Photograph 51

Nadine Garner transforms herself into Rosalind Franklin, X-ray crystallographer and one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.  ‘Photograph 51’ is an X-ray diffraction image taken by Franklin’s assistant, Raymond Gosling, under her direction, in May 1952 and it provided the key, the evidence for how DNA ‘works’ - the secret of Life. The highly competitive team of Francis Crick and American James Watson have a theory, but no proof.  Maurice Wilkins (supposedly Franklin’s associate - or would-be scientific partner) shows photograph 51 to them and they get hold of a brief internal paper Franklin has written.  The discovery is momentous - and Crick, Watson and Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for it in 1962.  Even Watson himself called what they did a ‘burglary’.  They beat Franklin to the punch.  If ever there was a tale of ‘the girl does all the work and the boys take the credit’ - and there are plenty of those - this is one of them.

Anna Ziegler’s play tells the story in straightforward ‘bio-pic’ style, managing to disguise any backstory or scientific exposition smoothly.  Director Pamela Rabe sets a crisp pace on a bare but suggestive stage (design by Nick Schlieper), which the cast never leaves - so that apparently the characters observe and ‘know’ everything.  A special note for Mary Finsterer’s music: it is powerful and also excellent because you scarcely notice it even while it affects the emotions.

In this play, you don’t need to be a scientist to keep up - as the playwright herself states in an interview included in the programme.  DNA is a sort of McGuffin that fuels the race in which Rosalind Franklin is hindered by more than her competitors’ patriarchal assumptions and lack of ethics.  She’s brilliant, she’s a woman, she’s Jewish (Watson drops a casually anti-Semitic sneer in the play) and she won’t play the boys’ game.  For her, science is a vocation and she is infuriatingly patient, utterly single-minded, even obsessive.  Nadine Garner plays her wonderfully as brittle, prickly, aggressive (as a necessary defence), dowdy, with a hunched posture and a brisk wit that punctures the boys’ blandishments and self-importance.  Her performance takes us under this unpromising surface so that we care deeply for Rosalind Franklin and when the very rare moments of self-revelation come they are very moving.  Only an American scientist, Don Caspar (Yalin Ozucelik in an open, charming performance), who’s also Jewish, gets past her defences by being quite simply openly admiring of her work (and just a little of her).

Meanwhile Paul Goddard’s Maurice Wilkins is excruciatingly awkward, as lacking in social skills as Franklin - although for different reasons.  (There’s a reveal towards the end that fails to convince.) Dan Spielman’s Crick is laid back, cynical, witty and very appealing. This DNA thing - and Watson - finally give him the focus he’s lacked.  Jim Watson (Nicholas Denton), on the other hand, is just slightly repellent - it’s all about winning.  He’s manic, jittery (maybe too jittery) and sports a very un-English mop of floppy curls.  Gig Clarke’s Gosling is boyish, sweet and touchingly in awe of Franklin; he also functions as a kind of narrator.

But there is no more of these characters than is necessary to dramatise Franklin’s struggle; the play very firmly rests on Ms Garner’s shoulders and she carries that burden with focus, warmth and intelligence even while almost never trying to be ‘likeable’ - in fact, the character is at times so rude, so ‘uncooperative’, that the audience gasps.  It’s an excellent cast, but Ms Garner is the reason to see the show.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Justion Ridler

Footnote #1: Franklin was played in London’s West End by Nicole Kidman - who got rave reviews and several awards.

Footnote #2: Franklin is played by the inimitable Juliet Stephenson, with Jeff Goldblum as Watson, in the excellent 1987 BBC telemovie Life Story - which is available on YouTube under the American title, The Race for the Double Helix.