ENTERTAINMENT

Intellect, optimism bring stars to life in 'Silent Sky'

David Lyman
Enquirer contributor
Maggie Lou Rader (Right) plays pioneering astronomer Henrietta Leavitt and Miranda McGee is her sister Margaret in the Know Theatre production of Lauren Gunderson’s “Silent Sky.”

There’s a temptation to get a little poetic when you write about a play like “Silent Sky.” It’s not just that playwright Lauren Gunderson includes snippets of poems in her script. But it’s that there’s something about the story – and, in this case, the Know Theatre’s production – where the senses are heightened to a level that defies conventional description.

First, a bit about the plot. The time is 1900. For many people in the United States, it’s an era of unbridled optimism, a time of limitless invention and exploration, a time when anything seems possible – for men, at least.

For Henrietta Leavitt, the play’s leading character, the world is more limiting. It’s not that she doesn’t have ability. Indeed, she is as brilliant as she is ebullient. She’s an astronomer with a degree from Radcliffe College and an analytical mind that can compete with the best. But when she begins a job at the vaunted Harvard College Observatory, she is allowed only to analyze the telescopic images made by the men on the staff – the only ones permitted to work with the observatory’s telescopes.

But Leavitt persists. And in time, her calculations and observations alter our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Maggie Lou Rader plays pioneering astronomer Henrietta Leavitt in the Know Theatre production of Lauren Gunderson’s “Silent Sky.”

“Silent Sky” is not a tale with a storybook ending. Leavitt and most of the characters in this place actually existed. And though her work garnered her much admiration among colleagues, she was never able to bask in the widespread recognition that a male researcher would have received.

The Know’s production, directed by associate artistic director Tamara Winters, is a stirring one. There is plenty of rightful indignation and frustration and sorrow. But Gunderson and Winters don’t let us wallow in misery. This is, after all, a play about a bright and optimistic woman with indefatigable determination.

Just about everything works with this play, beginning with Winters’ fabulous cast, led by Maggie Lou Rader as Henrietta. Rader is one of those performers who brings a salt-of-the-earth sincerity to nearly everything she does. She’s positive without being a Pollyanna. She’s strong and credible and wholly likeable. We want her to succeed.

The rest of the cast is every bit as convincing. There’s Miranda McGee as Leavitt’s sister. She’s the good sister, the one who stays home while Henrietta follows her passion for astronomy. And Justin McCombs as the bumbling, but adoring astronomer who falls in love with Henrietta and the brilliance of her work.

But along with Henrietta, the heart of this show are her colleagues, played by Annie Fitzpatrick and Regina Pugh, two of the area’s most gifted actors. You can’t wait for the scenes when all three of them are on stage. Their relationships and repartee are witty and entertaining and reassuring. And Pugh has rarely been more charming.

Maggie Lou Rader plays pioneering astronomer Henrietta Leavitt in the Know Theatre production of Lauren Gunderson’s “Silent Sky.”

The show also benefits from its physical and aural trappings. Set designer Andrew J. Hungerford – trained as an astrophysicist, incidentally – manages to bring Henrietta’s expansive passion for the sky to life in many of the stage elements, especially a huge wooden frame that arcs above the rear of the stage. A reference to the planetarium? Sure. But regularly throughout the play, it opens a huge window to the overpowering expanse of the star-dappled sky beyond it.

Gunderson’s script unapologetically takes dramatic liberties with Henrietta’s story. But then, she’s such a good writer that she can get away with it. Her writing is personable and smart and, when she needs to be, pretty pushy. But Gunderson would rather be pithy than pushy. She wants us to listen, even when she’s taking a dig at us.

Most of all, she wants us to cheer for her characters.

And we do. For all of them. Because in the end, this is not really a play about equations and devilishly difficult computations. It’s a story about love and friendship, about the all-consuming drive of intellectual curiosity and the need to understand the world around us.

“Silent Sky” continues through May 14 at the Know Theatre of Cincinnati.

'Silent Sky:' How women scienced the universe