Review: PAYNE: THE STARS ARE FIRE/Arrows and Traps at Jack Studio Theatre until 19 Feb 2022

‘This show proves that pub theatre is delivering big visions … it should be staged every year’ ★★★★.5

Seeing on stage the professional and pioneering life astronomer Cecilia Payne led, works well even if you have not seen its tandem play about Gustav Holst: ‘Holst, The Music in the Spheres’ is also performed this February at the Jack Studio Theatre in London’s Cultural Borough of the Year 2022 Lewisham – a century after the events presented tonight take place. It also works well if you are not too familiar with the wonders and vocabulary of astrophysics. Or how big data was once a library of printed glass plates from which the endlessness of our universe was pencilled in, millimetre for millimetre. Holst appears only in a few scenes: He was Payne’s school music teacher back in London, and from the two of them we will learn a lot about the value of companion-, mentor- and friendship.

The play 'Payne' is the journey of becoming one of the very first woman in the US to ever receive a PhD when female students were ridiculed daily (and excluded even from mealtimes at Cambridge where Cecilia Payne studied, knowing that women were exempt from achieving academic titles). But no matter how big the trust and praise of your leadership, also at the Harvard Observatory in the much more liberal United States professional success and fame in academia are not easily accessed by women in the 1920s and 1930s. Without other people’s assurance they are completely impossible – Payne does not suffer from imposter syndrome, but you might recognize the thoughtlessness of even well-meaning colleagues inducing exactly that: Being criticised is nothing anyone ever enjoys, but it can distract from performing well if every mistake leads to others debating if women should be allowed to pursue careers in general. Studies show that 100 years later, this factor still reflects in promotion patterns of corporations globally. 

I am sure the all-female knitting club I observe at the Brockley Jack front room during the interval has a word to say about that as well. If the screaming arrogance and blatant audacity of the movie Hidden Numbers made you gasp (and that is not even considering the racism the film addresses mainly), you are in for another shock when you learn about gender pay gaps leading to pawning in family treasures to make ends meet (“we had you in the budget under Equipment”). 

Arrow & Traps Theatre pieces don’t come short, and you will have to plan in 2.5 hours for ‘Payne: The Stars Are Fire’ a play about big dreams of those thinking most rationally, passionate but never pathetic. It should be staged every year, allow me to suggest on Equal Pay Day. But then that’s a sad, scary and mainly fluid benchmark. The fact that we had more men than women in the audience tonight gives hope. It’s in the nature and the actual profession of an astronomer to be optimistic – let’s be optimistic that one day in our lifetime the #endsalaryhistory campaigns will only be a memory: This show proves that pub theatre is delivering big visions. 

PAYNE: The Stars Are Fire

Presented by Arrows & Traps Theatre

Tues 25 January – Saturday 19 February 2022

Box Office: https://brockleyjack.co.uk/jackstudio-entry/payne-the-stars-are-fire/

Cast

Cornelia Baumann: Annie Jump Cannon

Lucy Ioannou: Adelaide Ames

Laurel Marks: Cecilia Payne

Edward Spence: Donald Menzel

Alex Stevens: Harlow Shapley

Toby Wynn-Davies: Gustav Holst & Henry Russell

Creatives

Directed by Ross McGregor

Designed by Odin Corie

Lighting Design: Jonathan Simpson

Sound Design: Alistair Lax

Video Design: Douglas Baker

Vocal Coach: Sarah Case

Make up Artist: Lucy Ioannou

Photography by The Ocular Creative

Produced by Christopher Tester for Arrows & Traps Theatre

Reviewer: Sadie Labram started reviewing theatre after being bored once again in a hotel room while travelling abroad: Since then watching a performance of anything is on the agenda whenever she goes away. She has reviewed theatre in the UK, Germany, Japan, Austria and Switzerland. Sadie is originally from Germany's musical capital Hamburg but has lived in London for over 14 years.