A Radioactive Musical Comedy about the Death and Life of Marie Curie. Holden Street Theatres in association with Tangram Theatre Co. Holden Street Theatres, The Arch. 14 Feb 2016

 

C.P. Snow must be rolling in his grave. Science and art could not be happier together - at least as they are manifested by one John Hinton.

Over the years, Hinton has brought to the Adelaide Fringe his shows Origin of Species, about Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein: Relatively Speaking.

He has returned wearing a long black dress. He is now Marie Curie in what is one of the longest-titled shows in showbiz. It is the third of what he calls his Scientrilogy of musical comedies.

It is all that the title says. It is musical, comic and narrative. It also is a science lesson extraordinaire.

 

Audience members are greeted at the theatre by Hinton and assigned an element. My card identified me as Bismuth 214. I was radioactive. In decay, I produced polonium 214.

Later in the play I was to link up with other audience members in a game of chemical evolution, all of us connected by a ball of green wool. Various elements made odd noises. Some wobbled. Everyone was having fun. Wool zig-zagged the auditorium.

 

Hinton is a dynamic, high-energy performer in this role. He condenses four months of Marie Curie's laboratory work extracting radium from pitchblende ore into about ten minutes of ever-faster reiteration of strenuous actions. It is exhausting simply to watch. But, never ceasing in his machine-gun descriptions of the science and actions of Marie Curie, he is also funny.

 

The calm companion onstage is Hinton's musician wife, Jo Eagle, who, adorned with beret and pencil moustache, accompanies him on accordion and plays the part of Pierre Curie. 

 

Hinton plays as himself from time to time and also a range of other characters such as Missie, the American journalist, the English chemist John Dalton and, hilariously, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.

And, he sings his glorious Radium song, the show's theme song with which the audience may sing along.

The Hinton voice is deep and strong and versatile and seeing the particular precision of his mime work, it does not surprise to discover that he is a product of the Jacques Lecoq school.

 

He paints Marie Curie as a fairly grumpy old genius who will do most anything to secure a supply of radium for her work. Hence her trip to the US and her relationship with Missie, the American journalist.

Family, career, science, it is all packed in to the wild elemental ride of John Hinton. 

 

Tour de force doesn't begin to describe it.

Five stars and then some.

 

Samela Harris

 

When: 14 Feb to 12 Mar

Where: Holden Street Theatres, The Arch

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au