The struggle to break free of restrictions – and the practical need for compromise – is something we can all appreciate. It’s there in Stella Feehily’s new play The Lightest Element, directed at Hampstead by Alice Hamilton – the story of astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (Maureen Beattie, exuding brittle charisma), who was the first person to realise that stars are predominantly made up of hydrogen and helium, and not iron.
Of course, her monumental breakthrough, made in 1925 at the age of 25, soon after her arrival at Harvard, was rubbished by her older, male supervisors (it contradicted the prevailing view), and when one, Henry Norris Russell (Julian Wadham), realised four years later that she was right, and published a paper on the subject, he was widely credited with the discovery. Men, eh? When we see this interaction, early on in the drama, he expects her to serve him tea while he crushes her thesis.
