Main Street Theater’s ‘Silent Sky’ proves to be a shining star.
Main Street Theater has always aimed high, artistically speaking.
So it’s no surprise to find the company looking to the stars as it reopens its theater following an extensive, $2 million renovation.
With its admirable Houston premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s “Silent Sky,” both the company and founding artistic director Rebecca Greene Udden are working confidently in characteristic mode.
Start with the intelligent script, with its historic setting and feminist perspective. It’s the factbased saga of trailblazing early-20th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt — a figure virtually unknown despite her important contributions to the field. Add Udden’s graceful, quietly effective direction and an engaging cast led by Shannon Emerick, spot-on in a role she was born to play, and you have what fans have come to recognize as a typical Main Street Theater production.
The added dimension is that, with the new technical and scenic capabilities and more generously proportioned stage, Main Street can apply production values several degrees above what was previously possible.
Spanning 1900-20, the play begins with the heroine’s brief speech, setting the mood and theme. The first scene shows Henrietta leaving her home in Wisconsin to take a job at the Harvard Observatory and establishes the loving yet conflict-ridden relationship between the heroine and her sister, Margaret. Henrietta is a modern woman, careeroriented, inspired and upheld by scientific exploration. Margaret is the more traditional familyoriented sort, inspired and upheld by religious faith. It sounds schematic, yet it’s surprising how well the play works this dynamic, without getting obvious — especially when the story takes a darker turn in Act 2.
At Harvard, Henrietta discovers she’s been hired as one of the “women computers” whose job is to catalog the stars on the basis of glass photo plates made by their male colleagues. Women aren’t even allowed to use the telescope. Nor does Henrietta have access to the observatory director who hired her; she must deal with his assistant, Peter. Henrietta and Peter make bad first impressions, he by stressing the importance of “knowing her place” and staying there, she by challenging him every step of the way.
But as she gets to know her colleagues, Annie and Williamina, Henrietta realizes the importance of the work and applies herself. She works twice as hard in extra hours on her own research, which eventually leads to her discovery of the “period-luminosity relationship.” It would prove the seminal principle necessary for accurately measuring the distance of stars, the size of the known universe and everything else in modern astronomy.
Meanwhile, the animosity between Henrietta and Peter gives way to attraction. Yet when it’s about to blossom into an actual romance, Henrietta’s father has a stroke and she’s called home to help care for him. When she returns a few years later, Peter is cool and distant. And though the importance of Henrietta’s breakthrough is recognized, it’s not Henrietta but her male colleagues who get the chance to apply her findings. Then ominous stomach pains signal more pressing concerns for the heroine.
Gunderson’s writing strikes a balance between the cerebral and poetic that’s ideal for this subject matter. She has a flair for a nicely turned line, as when Peter says: “For weeks, you’ve been the brightest object in my life — and we work with stars.” Henrietta’s opening and closing monologues, the latter projecting into the future, are examples of exceptionally effective stage writing.
Udden’s direction captures the spirit of the play and its heroine. The atmosphere, blending wonderment and matter-of-fact modesty, proves subtly affecting. Udden brings charm and the right light touch to the hesitant romance; and later, quiet depth and dignity to the profound scene between Margaret and the ailing Henrietta.
Emerick invests Henrietta with a quality perhaps best described as intellectual vivacity. She’s bright, determined, driven to know, know, know about everything — or at least, to know why she can’t know.
Jennifer Dean, playing the opposite type as Margaret, strikes the right contrast. She finds the exceptional in ordinary humanity — and in times of trial, especially, sisterliness.
James Monaghan amuses with his initial fussiness as Peter. He grows more sympathetic as he recognizes Henrietta’s qualities; then later, is believably conflicted when circumstances separate them.
As budding suffragette Annie, Elizabeth Marshall Black is sober and severe yet a sweetheart underneath. Claire Hart-Palumbo makes a jovial, down-to-earth Williamina.
Liz Freese’s handsome, airy setting features a skylight high upstage, made up of six panels showing an ever-changing array of evocative projections. Margaret Crowley’s neat period costumes, Eric L. Marsh’s lighting and Shawn W. St. John’s sound design all enhance the proceedings.
The play’s title is “Silent Sky” — but I could swear I heard the stars faintly singing.