THE SILENT SKY IS BEAUTIFUL

​THE SILENT SKY IS BEAUTIFUL by Barbara Biddison

As I write, this current Hamilton-Gibson drama is heading for its second  weekend in the Coolidge Theatre.  The stars will come out again, and five actors will take the audience on a wonderful journey to discover what's "up there" in that beautiful sky.  This play does an especially fine job of combining  some real history with the lives of five real people in a real world on earth.  We in the audience get to imagine what life might have been for human beings:  the woman who did the discovering, and the man who loves her, and the sister who stays at home happily having babies, and the office mates (one stern and no-nonsense until...  "women's lib" enters her life),  and the other playful with a marvelous accent.  There is some fine acting in this show, and there is a probably- unknown story to tell about "discovery in the heavens."

Jessie Thompson directs.  In the  program she speaks about the play's "delicate handling of the relationship between spirit and science, and its resolution that they are not mutually exclusive,"  with thanks to the playwright Lauren Gunderson.  I did not think about that
spirit/science relationship as I watched the play.  (I've seen it twice.).  But I was aware of it without knowing, without an obvious verbal statement to that effect.

The first time I remember seeing Megan Gallant was in Into the Breeches,  in 2022  . In this 2024 play she makes a very human Henrietta Leavitt who goes from staying up all night and going to sleep at her desk, to discovering/locating stars, to falling in love, to her final days at home.  The whole cast is strong and  real and totally believable..

And just one final observation about the venue, the stage in the Coolidge.  It had to be in this theatre with its wide open spaces and its high ceiling with "stars" way up there.  This show really does transport the audience to an "out-of-this-world" mental and physical space.

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