Photograph 51

by Anna Ziegler

seen at the Noel Coward Theatre on 26 October 2015

Directed by Michael Grandage and designed by Christopher Oram, the play features Nicole Kidman as Rosalind Franklin, Stephen Campbell Moore as Maurice Wilkins, Edward Bennett as Francis Crick, Will Attenborough as James Watson, Joshua Silver as Ray Gosling and Patrick Kennedy as Don Caspar.

Set in the underground laboratories of Kings College London (on the Strand) in 1951-2, the play concerns the research of Dr Rosalind Franklin who was attempting to photograph DNA in order to determine its structure. Her approach was not to speculate, but to deduce from reliable observation. At the same time, in Cambridge, Crick and the American Watson were approaching the same problem by building models based on what they knew, hoping that intuition would help.

The story of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was for many years shaped by Watson's popular account, which pictures his and Crick's efforts as the adventure of enthusiasts, and pictures Franklin's role as uncooperative and Franklin herself as a difficult not to say unpleasant woman. But it is fairly clear that their access to her data - in particular to the famous 'Photograph 51' that enabled Watson to deduce the structure from the X-ray refraction pattern - was not achieved with her full knowledge, and also that Watson himself viewed the world through unthinkingly misogynist eyes. Later editions of his book attempted to mitigate the pen portrait of Franklin's character by claiming ignorance of the effect that her illness might have had on her personal dealings with others, but this reads like special pleading.

The play presents matters more from Franklin's perspective, and immediately we are in a clubbable world of masculine socialising with entrenched ideas about the position (and even the intelligence) of women which an educated, dedicated and brilliant woman would find all but unbearable. From the outset of her arrival at Kings she feels betrayed through being assigned as an assistant when she thought she was coming to direct her own research; the Senior Common Room was only for men; Maurice Wilkins was always addressed as Dr Wilkins whereas she was either Miss Franklin, Rosemary or even 'Rosie', even though she had a doctorate. (It is possible that in this strictly hierarchical environment only the senior researcher would be honoured by his title, but in terms of the play and its presentation of the obstacles faced by a woman scientist, this practice forms a really effective leitmotif of irritation). In the play, Watson's expressed attitudes are particularly egregious to the modern ear, though doubtless they passed as almost unexceptionable at the time.

There were, then, any number of collisions on a personal level, quite apart from different professional priorities. Ray Gosling, the PhD lab assistant, makes bumbling attempts to smooth things over, but Franklin is irritated by Wilkins from the start, and he is out of his depth in dealing with a character like hers. By contrast, she receives nothing but admiration in a correspondence with an American PhD student (Don Caspar), though even he is non-plussed for a moment when they actually meet.

Nicole Kidman gave a fine performance as Rosalind Franklin - so focused on her work that she is hardly aware of her abrasiveness, but equally, determined not to be humiliated or sidetracked by the aura of condescension towards women made worse by a casual but rumbling anti-semitism. The men around her are also well-played, and it is a great strength that the play is not a star vehicle. The social situations are safely not caricatured though it is perhaps too easy to laugh comfortably at them sixty years down the line without quite realising how stifling they were.

'Photograph 51' treats the scientific subject, and the issues of differing approaches to research, with complete seriousness, without leaving the audience mystified. It does not over-idealise Franklin, because in the end her rigorous approach had its own traps. She did not see herself, of course, as in a race or competition, but the fact remains that she missed the significance of the photograph and placed it in a pile for later consideration, though arguably she would have seen it when she got around to looking. But by then Wilkins had shown the photograph to Watson and he had 'seen' it immediately.

In the meantime, Franklin had been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, and paths and possibilities have been closed off by increasing illness, and perhaps some regret. The play indulges in some imagined scenes where a more open expression of feelings and desires might have been possible, but brusquely closes off these potentially sentimental resolutions in the face of the more likely misunderstandings of what we see as a more repressed age.