This struggle to break free from constraints – and the practical need for compromise – is something we can all appreciate. It’s there in Stella Feehily’s new play The lightest elementset in Hampstead by Alice Hamilton – the story of astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (Maureen Beattie, oozing with brittle charisma), who was the first person to realize that stars are made mainly of hydrogen and helium, not iron.
Of course, her monumental breakthrough, made in 1925 at the age of 25, soon after her arrival at Harvard, was rubbished by her older, male supervisors (this contradicted the prevailing view), and then one, Henry Norris Russell (Julian Wadham ), realized four years later that she was right, and published a paper on the subject, he was widely credited with the discovery. Men, huh? When we see this interaction, early in the drama, he expects her to serve him tea while he crushes her thesis.
The Lightest element set primarily in 1956, the year Payne-Gaposchkin finally received a full professorship, the central idea of this absorbing hour and a half is that a student, Sally Kane (Annie Kingsnorth), a profile of ” Mrs G”, as her faithful assistant Rona (Rina Mahoney) calls her – a well-drawn relationship – writes for Harvard’s student newspaper.
Sally’s awful editor boyfriend, Norman (given an edgy dubiousness by Steffan Cennydd), is a vehement anti-communist; he wants her to detect what he believes to be the professor’s (whose husband is Russian) pinko tendencies, ultimately to prevent her from becoming chair of the department, a decision that is imminent.
As the interview gets underway, the play shakes off its early, expositional sluggishness. Watch the two women dance around each other – Kane flamboyant as she struggles with her conscience and her growing admiration for her subject; Payne-Gaposchkin enjoying herself until she begins to suspect an underlying agenda – is riveting.
Feehily elegantly charts the casually sexist landscape these women navigate; a later scene, among the men debating Payne-Gaposchkin’s appointment as chairman, is amusing and interesting as a moment of change. It’s fascinating and infuriating, and if it never fully ignites, it has a lasting slow burn.
The Rightat the Bush Theater, is more of a struggle. Following two best buddies, Zaid (Nathaniel Curtis) and Neelam (Mariam Haque), 18-year-olds from the age of 19, Waleed Akhtar’s new two-hour play jumps from scene to scene but never settles on anything long enough.
Growing up as working-class British Pakistani Muslims in Ilford, east London, both struggled with a lack of freedom; Neelam chafes against the behavioral expectations imposed on girls, Zaid is secretly gay. We meet them, in Anthony Simpson-Pike’s production, as he comes out to her in the first year of college (she is unsurprised). He left home to do computer science instead of drama under familial pressure; she was forced to live with her watchful parents while she completed her studies.
They want to be dramatists, and the biggest taboo is to be “basic”. And they love each other’s bones, as we’re told in a repeated, drug-fueled club flash, but whether what you think you’re feeling really counts when your brain is artificially flooded with serotonin is an interesting question.
Life comes to them naturally. Neelam will not compromise her writing to make it more accessible to white audiences, so the law swings; she falls in love with a non-Muslim black man, to her family’s horror.
Zaid stops writing, works a low-paying job and begins a relationship with an older, middle-class white playwright and teacher, Jeremy (Anthony Howell – both he and Nnabiko Ejimofor, as Neelam’s Nigerian British partner Deji, do quite well in sketch supporting roles ). Disappointments visit them both, tragedies strike them, concessions are made.
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Neelam’s development, from cursing, rambling teenager to thoughtful, loving but concerned adult, is compelling, and Akhtar embraces some truly fascinating ideas, the complexities of friendship being just one. Racism between different communities of color, explored in the relationship between Neelam and Deji; what it means to be gay and Muslim; the endless cycle of negotiation and failure that is parenting. But with so much packed in, these moments are frustratingly fleeting.
And for me, Zaid is a problem. His growth is more subtle, to the point of seeming stunted, and his increasing self-obsession and inability to muster compassion for the shortcomings of the people he cares about is surprisingly unsympathetic.
Most unpleasantly, his disappointment that Neelam has not achieved the great things he believes she is capable of diminishes her inherent worth. Her bewilderment at his behavior feels perfectly reasonable. She would be better off without him.
Star ratings (out of five)
The lightest element ★★★
The Right ★★
Nancy Durrant writes The London Culture Edit on Substack
