Two women meet on a train, in a flashback to Marie Curie’s early life. Both are Polish, on their way to Paris. Anne (Chrissie Bhima) is a farmhand while Marie (Ailsa Davidson) is a young scientist who will go on to win two Nobel prizes. We follow their friendship. It is an interesting framework, but the production charges through its story and song so fast and furiously that it seems like a medley of a complicated scientific life, performed at a hectic 100 minutes straight through.
Having begun life in Korea, and here directed by Sarah Meadows, the show incorporates Curie’s diary entries with her daughter serving as a narrative prompt. This feels like a flimsy expositional device for a show keen to tell us about Curie’s achievements and setbacks but without slowing down enough to unpack them.
We hurtle from classroom scenes at the Sorbonne to Curie’s meeting with Pierre (Thomas Josling), her future husband, when she becomes his lab assistant, and on to their discovery of radium. One scene elides into another (a kiss with Pierre turns into the cradling of their baby), sometimes leaving factual holes, and before we have had time to process the events. Rose Montgomery’s set design swivels from trains to labs and there is also a revolving staircase. It all leaves your head spinning.
Jongyoon Choi’s bombastic score does not reflect its subject matter, albeit exuberantly performed by an able cast. One number is about the periodic table; another is dedicated to radium. The sound is that of a high-voltage drama, but because the story is so brisk, the music does not build in emotional depth. The book (by Seeun Choun, with English adaptation by Tom Ramsay) and lyrics (also by Choun) are full of cliches and schmaltz, too. “Why do you do it?” Pierre asks Marie. “Because of my curiosity,” she says, and it sounds like a Mills and Boon romance, with science tacked on.
What is dealt with well is the commercial impact of their discovery. A radium factory is opened and, when its workers start dying, the Curies must grapple with the realisation that their element can do ill as well as good – and with the ethics of conducting research in light of this. But the show cuts back to schmaltz and an artificially upbeat end rather than staying with the discomfort of this dilemma. The sexism that Curie faced in her lifetime is also a touchpoint rather than anything deeper.
Films such as The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything are proof that the lives of brilliant scientists can make for great drama. Giving them the musical treatment is far riskier and can fall terribly flat, as this race through Curie’s life shows.
• At Charing Cross theatre, London, until 28 July
