Amy Michelle (left) plays the title role in Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight, with Erika Vetter (right) as a younger version of the marquise, her daughter and various other characters.
Lauren Gunderson is the most successful playwright you’ve never heard of—if you are a New York theatergoer. She has topped American Theatre magazine’s annual list of most-produced playwrights in three of the last five years and ranked second in the other two, but her work is mostly done by regional theaters. Gunderson’s Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight, for example, has been staged from Maryland to Wisconsin to New Mexico to Australia since it premiered at California’s South Coast Rep in 2009, but is just now arriving Off-Broadway.
Nigel Gore (right) portrays Voltaire, and Bonnie Black plays Emilie’s mother and other ladies of the court.
Duende Productions, a four-year-old, female-led company, is giving Gunderson’s work a rare New York City airing. The play aims to raise awareness about another woman: Emilie du Châtelet, an 18th-century noblewoman who translated Isaac Newton’s Principia into French, developed scientific theorems, and wrote her own highly regarded book, Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics). Though Emilie’s Principia translation is still published and her work on the concept force vive deepened understanding of kinetic energy and influenced Einstein’s theory of relativity, her name isn’t well-known today.
The marquise, married and the mother of three, also had a lover, and his name has survived the ages: Voltaire, poet, philosopher, renegade, wit, man-about-town. For much of their 15-year relationship, Emilie and Voltaire lived and studied together at a château away from court; in the play she describes it as “the perfect home—laboratory, palace, circus...” Voltaire acknowledged her as his muse in his 1738 Elements of the Philosophy of Newton (which she probably coauthored).
This long-lasting union of hearts and minds, the unusual circumstances under which it flourished—the château where they cohabitated belonged to her husband!—and the marquise’s achievements at a time when girls and women typically weren’t even allowed an education could make a gripping and emotional story on stage. But the production, while decked out in period frippery, fails to excite. One problem is how Emilie, after awakening from the dead as the play begins, recounts her life: announcing each event with “The scene in which...” This basically amounts to a chronological narration—not the most inventive storytelling.
“Everybody looks great in peak-Versailles costumes and wigs.”
The title La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life suggests that in the play Emilie’s actions and accomplishments are challenged, but what actually happens is more like the Marquise du Châtelet explains her life. And she does the opposite of defend it in a scene taking place on her daughter’s wedding day, when the daughter expresses a desire to be independent and make her own choices like her mother. Emilie responds: “You don’t want my life. Being exceptional is exhausting. You don’t want that. Live your lucky life. It will be easier by far.”
Amy Michelle, the founder of Duende, plays Emilie. Her performance is kind of flat, and she doesn’t have much romantic chemistry with Nigel Gore, who looks older than Voltaire was at the time (in his 40s)—which gives his waggishness a dirty-old-man vibe.
A few gimmicks of the script become repetitious rather than revelatory. One has Emilie keeping score between LOVE and PHILOSOPHY—the words are written on the wall, and she writes or erases hash marks beneath them depending on what she experienced. “Of all my loving and all my knowing, what matters, what lasts?” she says the first time she does it. But this doesn’t seem like appropriate framing for the marquise’s life: it was a triumph of love and intellect, not a conflict between them.
Zaven Ovian’s roles in Emilie include Isaac Newton, Emilie’s husband, and her post-Voltaire lover, Jean-François (she died after giving birth to his child). Photographs by Ashley Garrett.
In another repeated bit, whenever Emilie is about to make physical contact with someone, there’s a flash and blackout and then a younger actress takes Michelle’s place to finish enacting the moment. This might leave you wondering why the younger woman doesn’t portray her all the way through (while Michelle narrates) or why at times there are two Emilies doing the same thing.
Erika Vetter plays the younger Emilie. She and the two other supporting cast members, Zaven Ovian and Bonnie Black, make a better impression than the leads, with lively, well-shaded performances in multiple roles. Everybody looks great in peak-Versailles costumes (by Christina Beam) and wigs, while Sarah White’s set design places stacks of books amid the settees and other antique-style furniture. The back wall, where LOVE and PHILOSOPHY along with F=mv² (Emilie’s force vive equation) are chalked, occasionally lights up with an array of scientific formulas—a collaboration, presumably, between White, lighting designer Sasha Lysenko and projection programmer Jørgen Skjærvold.
Kathy Gail MacGowan has directed a sturdy production overall, and the forgotten herstory is worth resurrecting. But this play that revolves around trying to understand fire and energy could use more spark.
Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight runs through April 30 at the Flea (20 Thomas St.). Performances are 7:30 p.m. Monday and Wednesday through Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday (2 p.m. on April 30); for tickets and more information, visit duendeproduction.org.
Playwright: Lauren Gunderson
Direction: Kathy Gail MacGowan
Sets: Sarah White
Costumes: Christina Beam
Lighting: Sasha Lysenko
Sound: Sean Kiely
