Galileo’s Daughter tries too much and delivers too little
Central Square Theater adapts historical letters to the modern era
Photo Courtesy of Maggie Hall
Galileo’s Daughter
Written by Jessica Dickey
Directed by Reena Dutt
Location Cambridge, MA
Dates playing (Nov. 14 - Dec 8)
Tucked between shops and restaurants along Massachusetts Ave is the Central Square Theater, with audience members spilling out of the building and down steps to watch its newest play, Galileo’s Daughter. The plot is based on the 124 historical letters sent from Maria Celeste to her father, the renowned scientist Galileo Galilei, throughout her lifetime. Central Square Theater brings a twist to this story by paralleling Maria’s (Sandra Seoane-Seri) life and struggles in the 17th century with “The Writer” (Caroline Kinsolving), who struggles with her own identity and work as a playwright in the modern day.
Through these parallel journeys, Director Reena Dutt attempts to explore the themes of female identity, freedom versus constraint, the danger of truth, and one’s relationship with work. Galileo’s Daughter is ripe with fresh ideas and interesting concepts, but ultimately fails to say something meaningful about any of them.
Firstly, and perhaps most disappointingly, is the play’s shallow exploration of female identity. For a play titled Galileo’s Daughter, the show itself does very little to make her into a memorable character. The same three facts about her life are told to the audience by The Writer—Maria Celeste was a “rockstar nun,” she dedicated her life to her father’s work, and she was “cool and badass.”
What does the play show about her character, then? It sets up a few struggles Maria faces, such as being forced to join a convent because she’s an illegitimate child, against her wishes to stay as her father’s assistant. However, we never see her struggles in the convent, and in the next few scenes, Maria tells her father that she enjoys her life in the convent. We see none of the reasoning behind this sudden change of heart, or what growth in her character her struggles have given her. We’re only ever told about who she is, not shown.
The Writer, on the other hand, is a more complex character as she struggles with feeling dragged down by her divorce. It’s implied that her interest in Maria’s life is because she idolizes Maria; Maria is completely dedicated to her work, courageous, and a hard-working woman who doesn’t have a husband or children holding her back. The play tries hard to show parallels between The Writer and Maria: The Writer struggles with feeling confined by her divorce while Maria struggles with feeling confined by the convent and The Writer and Maria are both passionate and dedicated to their line of work.
However, because of Maria’s shallowness as a character, any parallels between the two fall flat. The play follows The Writer as she searches for Maria’s letters, with the climax of the show occurring when she finally does. What revelations come about finding them? What does this entire journey mean for The Writer? Apparently nothing, because her revelation comes from the scene after—where a random man she stumbles upon at a bar imparts wisdom on her, kisses her, then leaves. The Writer, after kissing him, dramatically reveals that she’s finally “free” and garners the courage to sign and finalize her divorce papers.
Artistic Director Lee Mikeska Gardner claims that The Writer’s revelation is “if every woman in the world were allowed to define themselves without the need of validation from a male-dominated society there would be no danger at all.” Ironically enough, this revelation is imparted onto The Writer from a man in a single scene. Maria’s letters, and by extension Maria, are reduced to a macguffin for The Writer’s arc.
Maria’s role as a device to further other characters is even more evident in her relationship with her father, Galileo (Diego Arciniegas). In an attempt to make Maria an individual character separate from her father, the play does exactly the opposite, tying all her scenes, her struggles, and wants to him. Arciniegas portrays Galileo as a fun-loving, goofy father who wholeheartedly supports his daughter. This simplified and modernized portrayal of their relationship strips away the opportunity for the story to explore how an understanding of female identity, especially in relation to men, has changed over the years. Furthermore, without any tension between Maria and her father, the play loses its chance to give Maria the ability to assert who she is on her own.
This portrayal of Galileo is only used to further his own character and to help with his own arc of understanding identity in relation to the vast universe. Galileo’s conflict comes from wanting to expose the truth that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not the other way around. Here, the play presents interesting themes. Why is the idea that humans aren’t at the center of the universe so terrifying? What does it mean to not be unique? Yet again, it fails to deliver anything meaningful. Galileo, at the end of the play, gives up on his quest to spread this news (for which his motivation is never explained). He turns into a more reserved and regretful man, contrasting his fun-loving attitude from before.
Besides the themes Galileo’s Daughter tries and fails to execute, its unique narrative structure and acting choices also fail to make any impact. The show is uniquely set in a black-box theater with only three actors (Arciniegas and Seoane-Seri play multiple side roles) and The Writer is both a character in the show and its narrator.
The multiple roles certainly add a lot of creativity to the show, but felt like a way to get cheap laughs by the end. Arciniegas, besides playing Galileo, also plays an amalgamation of “Italian characters” based on Italian stereotypes. Any time The Writer would come to a revelation, it would be broken by a “joke” from his character, never allowing the audience to truly sit with an idea. Furthermore, Kinsolving spends the majority of the show narrating what she’s doing or what she’s seeing as a meta-joke for the audience, seeing as The Writer is a playwright. Instead, it felt like a gimmicky and cheap way to pour tons of exposition out without creativity, and caused the show to drag in its pacing.
Overall, while Galileo’s Daughter attempts to communicate many ideas and theories, none of them stick to the wall or the audience’s minds.