"The Half Life of Marie Curie" This Curious Biopic Play Is Listless

As the program notes for Lauren Gunderson's play points, it's being performed during Women in History Month. Unfortunately, the play misses out on conveying the significant life led by Madame Curie, the 1st woman to have received the Nobel Prize. She is only 1 of 4 people to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes. The two Nobel Prizes were in physics for her work on radioactivity, chemistry and for discovering radium and polonium. Gunderson is one of the most produced playwrights in the US, a 2 time winner of the Steinberg/AYCA New Play Award and the Lanford Wilson Award among numerous other playwriting honors. "The Half Life of Marie Curie," (THLMC) is Gunderson's one act, two character play. Besides Curie (played by a wonderful Leontyne Mbele-Mbong) the other character is Hertha Ayrton ("Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"). Ayrton, though not a household name, was an engineer, physicist and suffragette. She received the Hughes Medal for her scientific work and improved the relative new invention of the electrical light by reducing the cacophonous noise emitted from street lights. This we learned from Ayrton who immodestly shares her achievements in her opening oration which she concluded saying, "You're welcome!. Of the two women, it's Ayrton who relays relevant info pertaining to their achievements, their deceased husbands. It was Ayrton who supported Curie during her public excoriation. Curie, widowed with 2 daughters, engaged in an affair with a married man, physicist Paul Langevin. This resulted in an uproar from the press and the public. (Note: Langevin didn't suffer the stigma of a social scandal despite being the married party in their year long affair.) This affair was foremost in the play. Although Ayrton came to support her friend amidst the brouhaha, it seemed her focus was on obtaining lascivious details of Curie's sexual exploits. Instead of a biopic play on two very prominent women in their fields of  sciences and mathematics, these women were portrayed as either sullen or bombastic living half lives without their spouses. Curie's achievements from aiding soldiers in WWI with her mobile radiography units, her humanitarian contributions to the French War effort, advancements in radiation research and the advancements from her discovery of elements were sorely subjugated and placed on back burners. The play was more about Ayerton's quest to uncover Curie's sexual conquests. Ayerton was also dismissive of her own successes in mathematics, her inventions and her fortitude for women's rights appearing instead as a lecherous lush. "The Half Life of Marie Curie" missed out on presenting two distinguished female figures. These historic heroines seemed  frivolous and lacking without their spouses. The acting was commendable but the writing disappointingly desultory and listless. This was a sorely missed opportunity to import knowledge about formidable women in history especially during women's history month,