Ensemble Theatre

On my seven-month-old baby’s bookshelf sits a brightly illustrated children’s book about Marie Curie. Its pages celebrate her love of science, her marriage to physicist Pierre Curie, and her status as the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. These are the facts most often recited, but women are rarely one-dimensional. Alongside moments of triumph, often lie moments of despair and self-doubt. It is one of those lesser-known chapters that Lauren Gunderson explores in The Half-Life of Marie Curie, a play that premiered off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in 2019, and was later released as an audio drama on the Audible platform. The play now makes its Australian premiere at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre under the direction of Liesel Badorrek (The Glass Menagerie). Gunderson, frequently referred to as “the most produced living playwright in America”, has a signature formula across her 20-plus plays: identify a compelling duo, hone in on a pivotal historical moment, inject sharp, rhythmic dialogue, and keep it snappy – 90 minutes or less. The result is a biographical vignette interspersed with theatrical poetry. The plays often just recount history – however, at its best, her formula  can thrillingly heighten a core emotional conflict. In this case, it’s the friendship between Marie Curie and Hertha Ayrton, and the impact these women had on each other. Though often relegated to a footnote in Curie’s story, here Ayrton commands center stage... The narrative begins at Curie’s...