The Half-Life of Marie Curie - Audio Drama Reviews

Half-Life Depth and Pacing

The complete runtime of “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” totals less than 90 minutes, but don’t let that fool you. It’s a commitment. It’s also marvelous.

Many audio dramas today waste an hour or two before anything of consequence gets discussed or happens. Some seem to wait for the entire series, and then cram all the action into their final episode. But “Half-Life” takes the opposite approach: there are so many concepts volleyed back and forth at top speed throughout this play that sometimes it’s hard to keep up. Which is both exactly as incredible as it sounds and also just a little bit daunting.

“Half-Life” is an audio recording that started its life as a New York City stage play, and it shows since this clearly wasn’t intended for casual listening. The great ideas start with the title – as Marie explains to the listener in the first scene, the term half-life describes the moment an element decays so fully that it becomes more other than self. Half-Life, then, will be the story of the key moments of transformation for Marie Curie. And that’s pointed out to the listener in just the first half of the first scene.

Although Audible has segmented the play into many discrete ‘scenes’ each around 3-15 minutes, this doesn’t feel like the sort of piece that listeners can easily dip into and out of. If possible, the ideal way to listen to “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” would be in one or two long sessions.

With that all said, this is a substantial story that honestly deserves the attention it requires. Lauren Gunderson has done a wonderful job of writing two impressive and gifted women; one is fully and completely herself from the instant we meet her, while the other has just won her second Nobel Prize but is only now starting to discover who she is.

Acting and Historical Figures

Hertha Ayrton, a self-made woman in every sense of the term, is delightful from the moment she enters and says in her opening monologue: “There was a technical problem in the world and I fixed it and you’re welcome.” That sums up who she is well, a person who sees things that are wrong in the world and fixes them with a flourish. In this case, she just so happens to be working on fixing Marie. The actress who plays Hertha, Kate Mulgrew, is best known for her role as Captain Janeway of Star Trek (if you haven’t seen it, she’s excellent there too), but the show “Half-Life” gives her a vehicle to shine in a way that Star Trek rarely did.

Francesca Faridany as Marie Curie is also terrific, even though for the majority of the play she has the difficult task of playing a depressed, potentially suicidal person who has recently had her entire life ripped away from her. Marie has just been found out for having a relationship with a married man. Now all of her friends have decided that she’s a monster, her lab has been taken away, the Nobel committee wants to distance themselves from her, and journalists besiege her home.

Of course, none of this would have happened if she were a man, which is self-evident even before Hertha starts raging against the hypocrisy of the slander. Faridany succeeds at remaining just as compelling as Mulgrew throughout every moment of the show, even though little that she says or does is ever particularly light or fun, which is reasonable considering her circumstances. And despite clearly being beaten down by society, Faridany demonstrates that even at her lowest moments Marie Curie is still an intellectual force to be reckoned with.

Writing and Authorship

These are both extraordinary women, and Lauren Gunderson seems like a natural choice to write a play about extraordinary women since she is also rather extraordinary herself. (She’s currently America’s most-produced living playwright.) While the play occasionally loses the thread of a plot, the concepts she examines are plenty interesting to keep the story aloft, especially given its slight runtime.

You’ll need to set aside some time and focus, but this is a deeply rewarding story about how people show love and what’s required for a person to change.