After the drubbing I received for reviewing Hamlet during its preview period, I hesitated before posting this review. I do not anticipate that Nicole Kidman’s more enthusiastic fans reach the heights of Cumber-mania, however, and therefore I will proceed (albeit with some trepidation).

Photograph 51 tells the story of Rosalind Franklin (Kidman), a talented chemist and crystallographer working at King’s College in the postwar period. Her photographs were instrumental in contributing to the discovery of the structure of DNA that was ultimately made by James Watson (Will Attenborough) and Francis Crick (Edward Bennett). She worked, somewhat uneasily, alongside diffident Professor Maurice Wilkins (Stephen Campbell Moore) and sympathetic PhD student Ray Gosling (Joshua Silver). Don Caspar, an American postdoc (Patrick Kennedy) was the final player.

I enjoyed this play (beautifully written by Anna Ziegler) very much. It was whip-smart, feminist, and above all, interesting from start to finish. It explored issues of misogyny, anti-semitism, scientific collaboration and theft, and even romance. I was reminded of poor Tim Hunt, who was hounded for suggesting that it’s difficult to have women in a lab because “you fall in love with them and they fall in love with you.” Now, that was a joke, and the poor man has certainly paid for it. It is an inconvenient truth, however, that in all workplaces (not just labs), people fall in love with each other (and not just heterosexually) and this can wreak havoc on the work. We are all expected to act professionally and most of us do, but it is human nature that most people find it very difficult to pretend that they don’t have feelings.

At any rate, that was a minor, but interesting, point in the play. The focus was on Franklin’s work, and Kidman did a good job developing her clever, prickly character. She seemed to be having some difficulty in making the transition back from screen to stage, as she was sometimes larger than life and at certain moments impossibly subtle. This is a performance that I think will bed in significantly over the preview period, and I would like to see it again before the end of the run to see how it develops. Her accent was acceptably English, but not nearly posh enough for the period (although none of the other actors went for a period accent either). Having seen a significant amount of celebrity casting this summer (American Buffalo, The Elephant Man) and not having been particularly impressed by the plays themselves, I came away most impressed with Kidman’s acumen in choosing the play.

The other actors were all very good. Will Attenborough was the standout for me as a delightfully obnoxious James Watson, complete with spot-on American accent and some of the best lines (one enjoyable line was to the effect of “Religion is a scam run by the rich to keep down the poor,” which resonates rather well in contemplating US politics). The others were also excellent, providing ample illustration of the points that Ziegler makes about men and women, sexism and misogyny. I appreciated the set, which felt suitably dank for King’s College in 1951. (As someone who has taken language classes on the lower ground floor of King’s College, I can attest that it can be somewhat dank even today).

The play ends with the end of Franklin’s life, about which I will be vague (although its foreshadowing was subtly and exquisitely done). Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962, but Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to the study of nucleic acids is growing in recognition. Recommended.