Nicole Kidman, who was last seen on the London stage 17 years ago in David Hare’s adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s notoriously erotic La Ronde, returns to act in Anna Ziegler’s play and to pay tribute to the English chemist and crystallographer, Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958), the woman who cracked DNA and didn’t get the Nobel Prize she deserved.
Franklin, always convinced that she was right, was not, to put it mildly, an easy person to work with. She was her own worst enemy. Her froideur kept everybody at a distance and led to clashes when people trespassed on her territory. Maurice Wilkins (Stephen Campbell Moore), with whom she was meant to work on equal terms at King’s College, had a particularly hard time. Her only close friend was an American admirer (Patrick Kennedy).
Kidman’s performance of a brusque, no-nonsense, fiercely intelligent loner in a male-dominated world, who didn’t suffer patronising males gladly, is highly accomplished. Michael Grandage’s clever production shows a firm grasp of the loose script. The supporting actors are well-chosen and the designer, Christopher Oram, has provided an arresting setting, a bombed-out King’s College and the rubble still unremoved.