Skip to main content

SILENT SKY

The number of stars is often used in reviews to rank shows.  Silent Sky at Fords Theatre is worth a sky full. 
Like the stars in the sky,  this wonderful show is truly filled with wonder.
Wonder  -  for the history of Henrietta Leavitt and the Harvard “computers” who mapped the universe using glass plates taken of the night sky.
Wonder -  for this star filled production.  Laura C. Harris is Henrietta, brilliant and dedicated as an astronomer, who made her star shattering discoveries when women were not allowed to peer through nighttime telescopes.  Nora Achrati is Annie Cannon and Holly Twyford is Willama Fleming, both who set records in their observations on which  later astronomical discoveries have been based.  
Henrietta is determined to follow her passion despite the pleadings of  her sister Margaret Leavitt, played by Emily Kester.  Jonathan David Marin is Peter Shaw, a  composite character of  male attitudes about women at the time.  He falls in love with Henrietta, he admires her, but he also subscribes to traditional roles for men and women.  
Wonder  -  Ah!   Playwright Lauren Gunderson connects the study of far off stars with what is deep inside the human heart in finding our place in the universe.   
Special note:  Andre J. Pluess’ beautiful original music, romantic when Harriet and Peter dance away under the stars, is an inspiration when Harriet connects the concerto her sister Margaret is composing with  her own mathimatical research.
Side note:  Long before their were woman astronauts, there were women astronomers.  If it be not enought that the women did all the data processing, need it be mentioned that a woman, Mary Anna Palmer Draper, herself an astronomer, using her own inheritance, in 1886  donated money to the Harvard  College Observatory in order for her and her husband’s work  to photograph the spectra of stars to continue— that led to Leavitt’s discovery, which led to Hubble’s, which led to all of us to know there are universes beyond our own.  Silent Sky leads us to know more about how those discoveries came to be .

Ford’s Theatre, Washington DC to Feb. 23, 2020.

Popular posts from this blog

  Once is here again!   The Brooklyn Gallery Players reach into the treasure chest of great musicals to bring Once alive and on stage in Brooklyn (until to December 17, 2023). Director Mark Gallagher , and Music Directors David Fletcher and Brendon McCray have crafted a vibrant production, seamlessly integrating the 15 member cast in roles  as both actors and musicians. Set in Dublin, the  formula for the poignant love triangle  is simple. Patrick Newhart  plays Guy, an Irish musician who has given up  on love as he sings the award winning classic  Falling.  Newhart mastered the bombastic busking guitar style and performed each of his songs with intensity and passion Sophie Smith-Brody  is Girl,  a Czech woman  who will inspire him to try again both in  love and with music. Smith-Brody performed each of her disparate songs with aplomb,  from the opening classical piece to her plaintive solos – If You Want...
Read more
  Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando — sparkling wit and ageless wisdom —   at   Constellation Theatre — gone but not forgotten In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando A Biography ,  the eponymous hero undergoes many changes over the centuries— from roles in society and relationships to sex change.  Since the time travel gender bending work was published in 1928, this his/her story has continued to undergone adaptions to its original form, from analytical scholarly critiques to crowd pleasing  movies and stage plays.  Constellation Theatre Company continued  the tradition with its amazing presentation of Sarah Ruhl’s narrative play Orlando .    Five actors  take on dozens of roles as characters or in the  chorus to keep the story at its rapid pace,  condensing events spanning almost five centuries into 100 minutes.   Orlando (Mary Myers) is  ever the aristocrat whether as a page in the court of  Queen Elizabeth I (Alan Naylor)...
Read more
From EUGENE ONEGIN  to  DER ROSENKAVALIER  (Or Everything you want to know about love is at the MET OPERA) Great music and great literature meet on a great stage at the Met Opera’s production of Eugene Onegin on the big screen on April 25, 2017.  The words are Pushkin’s from his  Russian novel-poem.  The music is by Tchaikovsky  for what he termed “lyrical scenes.” Tchaikovsky’s music is forever embedded in our consciousness  with his fantasy ballets like  Nutcracker   and Swan Lake .   Pushkin’s work has provided the inspiration for dozens of musical works, including another famous Russian opera, Boris Godunov.     This team of Tchaikovsky and Pushkin is a sure thing but while there are many scholarly interpretations of Pushkin’s work, there is none that so gets it at its core as this opera. Using the very words from Pushkin’s poem,  Tchaikovsky built the opera through a series of powerful co...
Read more