The Lightest Element West End Reviews

Sarah Beaton and Johanna Town’s screen and light projections offer an elegant complement to the spare staging but can’t quite break the arid, academic feel of the production. Sally’s journey is nicely marked – from eating ice cream sundaes wh...

Sarah Beaton and Johanna Town’s screen and light projections offer an elegant complement to the spare staging but can’t quite break the arid, academic feel of the production. Sally’s journey is nicely marked – from eating ice cream sundaes when we first meet, to her final meeting with her boyfriend who notes her drinking “hard liquor”. But Cecilia’s story never quite takes to the skies. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Director Alice Hamilton captures something of this scientific excitement in her production. On Sarah Beaton’s set, an observatory-like curved strip of video screen covers the entire back of the top of the stage, upon which video designer Zakk Hein�...

Director Alice Hamilton captures something of this scientific excitement in her production. On Sarah Beaton’s set, an observatory-like curved strip of video screen covers the entire back of the top of the stage, upon which video designer Zakk Hein’s animated scrawls of equations, fields of stars and solar eclipses play out like watching mid-twentieth-century news reels in a darkened cinema. There’s a sense of grandeur in these between-scene moments – of the ‘why’ and not just the struggle – that this meticulously researched play could dip into more deeply.

It’s easy to see how Payne-Gaposchkin, headstrong and plain-speaking, with a terrible nicotine habit, might be the inspiration for a riveting drama. Sadly The Lightest Element is not that play: its stifling air of veneration and exposition-laden di...

It’s easy to see how Payne-Gaposchkin, headstrong and plain-speaking, with a terrible nicotine habit, might be the inspiration for a riveting drama. Sadly The Lightest Element is not that play: its stifling air of veneration and exposition-laden dialogue means that even though the central character is looking at the stars, her story remains resolutely earthbound.