“The Half Life of Marie Curie” by playwright Lauren Gunderson is The BRAVO’s October production. Despite the name, the play is not focused on science but on a little-known event in the life of the two-time Nobel Prize winner.
Her affair with a married man has become tabloid fodder, her Paris home is under siege by journalists, and her professional standing is cracked open by public scrutiny. Seeking refuge, she turns to her friend and fellow trailblazer Hertha Ayrton: a physicist, suffragist, engineer, and in this telling, Curie’s emotional and moral compass.
What follows is not a simple healing retreat but a slow-burning, powerfully perceptive excavation of grief, genius, legacy, and the price of ambition. And it’s funny! The Salt Lake City Weekly says, “There are as many laugh-out-loud lines and moments as there are in many plays more clearly defined as comedies.”
Sharon Jarvis directs Donna Burroughs and Kathleen Morris. “The Half Life of Marie Curie” runs from October 9 to 11 and 16 to 18. The October 9 show is at 7:30 p.m., all other performances are at 4 p.m. Tickets are 350 pesos and may be reserved at tickets@thebravo.org.