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The most-produced living American playwright in 2016, Gunderson has several works seen or about to be seen in San Diego theaters, among them \u201cEmilie: La Marquise du Chatelet \u2026\u201d at New Village Arts last season, and \u201cThe Revolutionists\u201d to be seen at Moxie Theatre in May.<\/p>\n
Director Robert Smyth (Lamb\u2019s producing artistic director) was shown \u201cSilent Sky\u201d by a colleague and immediately applied for the rights to produce it locally, which he does in gorgeous fashion with scenic design by Sean Fanning and a cast of five (four women).<\/p>\n
Rachel VanWormer\u2019s endearing performance as pioneering woman astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1921) is stunning, and her character\u2019s unconsummated love affair with a socially gauche astronomer named Peter Shaw, played by her real-life husband Brian Mackey, is delicious fun.<\/p>\n Add to this the two other women \u201ccomputers\u201d (that\u2019s what they were called) in the astronomy lab \u2014 Annie Canon (Cynthia Gerber) and Williamina Fleming (Deborah Gilmour Smyth) \u2014 a host of unseen but fully imagined additional characters, and Henrietta\u2019s musical, married sister Margaret (Catie Grady), and the audience member finds herself royally entertained, entranced, and wanting more \u2014 more of this play, its characters and more of Gunderson.<\/p>\n When the historical Henrietta went to work at Harvard (in 1893 at age 25) scientists believed the Milky Way was the extent of the universe with earth most importantly its center.<\/p>\n In her job, which she spent her dowry to effect, Henrietta, a stargazer from childhood, began cataloguing the stars from photographic plates given her and the other computers by male astronomers, who were the only ones allowed to use Harvard\u2019s Great Refractor Telescope, which was the largest in the United States for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n Leavitt\u2019s discoveries gave scientists the means to measure the distance between stars and thus the size of the expanding universe. Don\u2019t worry about the science: Lamb\u2019s provides a helpful glossary. Robert Smyth illuminates Gunderson\u2019s text with keen direction of his assemblage. Jemima Dutra\u2019s period costumes, which include suffragette \u201cbloomers,\u201d are wondrous, and Nathan Peirson\u2019s lighting provides exactly what\u2019s needed expansively. Deborah Gilmour Smyth provides sound design and original music.<\/p>\n Gunderson, who is based in the Bay Area, has a talent for mingling metaphors and revelations about scientific, poetic, human and even religious matters, sending shivers of recognition up one\u2019s spine. Her language is glorious, her insight keen, and the play\u2019s culmination, touching and inspired. It makes one glad to be alive in the cosmos.<\/p>\n \u2014Charlene Baldridge has been writing about the arts since 1979. Follow her blog at charlenecriticism.blogspot.com<\/a> o llegar a ella en <\/em>charb81@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Por Charlene Baldridge | Revisi\u00f3n de teatro<\/p>","protected":false},"author":731,"featured_media":251555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Another hit at Lamb\u2019s Players","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/731"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Another](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Handshake.jpg\")
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