Review: ‘Photograph 51’ at the Fountain Theatre

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Anna Ziegler’s “Photograph 51,” now in its West Coast premiere at the Fountain, is one of those factually based scientific suspense stories (Paul Mullin’s “Louis Slotin Sonata” and Hugh Whitemore’s “Breaking the Code” come to mind) that show the human toll behind the world-changing scientific discovery.

Here, that discovery is the structure of DNA, the “secret of life” sussed out in the early 1950s by Nobel winners James Watson and Francis Crick.

Ziegler’s protagonist, Rosalind Franklin, played with affectless aloofness by Aria Alpert, was a British physicist whose X-ray image of DNA’s double helix form -- the photograph of the title -– was “borrowed” by Crick and Watson in their own research.

Franklin died unaware of the part she had played in solving the puzzle. Crick and Watson later shared credit with Franklin, but as the Nobel is not awarded posthumously, she was not included in the prize -– a fact that adds a tragic dimension to her story.

Scientifically speaking, Ziegler seems to have her material down cold, at least from a layman’s perspective. Emotionally, however, her tone is frustratingly arcane.

Franklin’s fellow researchers are her detested “partner” Maurice Wilkins (Daniel Billet) and doctoral student Raymond Gosling (Graham Norris). Also in the race are Watson (notably stiff Ian Gould and Crick (Kerby Joe Grubb), who seem intended as the villains in this whodunit –- right up until they turn innocuous.

Characters act as onstage observers, commenting on the action as a sort of Greek chorus. Franklin’s epistolary romance with an admiring American physicist (Ross Hellwig) further muddies the plot, which commences as a righteous indictment of a proto-feminist wronged by a sexist system before ultimately veering, weirdly, into a tale of love interrupted and romantic regret.

Even weirder, the play closes with Wilkins’ passionate profession of love for his doomed colleague, who has heaped scorn on him throughout their association. Surely, such a denouement, even if it’s only occurring in Wilkins’ imagination, requires some emotional foreshadowing. In director Simon Levy’s feeling but misguided staging, the obviously talented Billet and Alpert come across as giggling nerd and prim ice queen, respectively. Base poured on acid, they neutralize this potentially combustible experiment.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Photograph 51,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 3. $25-$28. (323) 663-1525. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.