Each season, as part of its Catalyst Collaborative@MIT collaboration with MIT, the Central Square Theater produces at least one play that brings together art and science. It’s the nation’s only ongoing partnership between a professional theater company and a research institution, and it celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2025.
It’s brought real-world stories about science to the stage, such as “Beyond Words,” about researcher Irene Pepperberg, who has spent 45 years training grey parrots to the cognitive level of a 6- to 8-year-old human child. Before I saw it, I hadn’t heard of Pepperberg. On my way out, I felt I had gotten to know her intimately.
I hoped the same would be true of “Galileo’s Daughter,” the play by Jessica Dickey that’s at the theater until Dec. 8. I was disappointed.
The play, directed by Reena Dutt, is a co-production with WAM Theatre in Western Massachusetts about renowned scientist Galileo Galilei (Diego Arciniegas) and his illegitimate daughter, Maria Celeste (Sandra Seoane-Serí), whom he sent to a convent when his ideas of a heliocentric universe began to gain attention. He knew he would run into trouble with the Catholic Church, and since her illegitimacy prevented him from being able to marry her off, to the convent it was. The play goes back and forth between that unfolding in the 1600s and a second story about a playwright, simply called The Writer (Caroline Kinsolving), who has traveled to present-day Italy to study the 124 letters Maria Celeste wrote her father from the convent.
It’s an interesting concept, but Dickey’s play is disorganized, disjointed and unbalanced. It focuses far too heavily on the Writer for a play called “Galileo’s Daughter” – Maria Celeste is the titular character, yet she’s barely there. Unfortunate, because Seoane-Serí’s performance was easily the best part of this production.
She shines, playing Maria Celeste with a captivating verve that doesn’t let you look away. If she had been the star, as the title suggests, this would have been a knockout show. Arciniegas, likewise, is dynamic, especially as he takes on the roles of side characters from the receptionist at the Writer’s hotel to the friar at Maria Celeste’s convent (although his accent is iffy, sometimes slipping inexplicably into something that sounds more British than Italian). In scenes together, Arciniegas and Seoane-Serí portray a warm father-daughter relationship that doesn’t feel particularly accurate to the 17th century but is enjoyable nonetheless. They have a chemistry that enables them to play off each other well, with some humorous moments sprinkled in. I just wished I was able to see more of it.
Instead, the Writer spends multiple scenes trying to find the letters at the library and going back and forth between archivists – scenes that aren’t particularly compelling and don’t do much to drive narrative in what is only an 80-minute show. She embarks on this journey to Italy amid a divorce, at a moment she’s feeling unsure of herself and her life. Kinsolving played the role with a chaotic freneticism that presumably was meant to capture the emotional turmoil of divorce.
The plot moves quickly, but doesn’t give much actual history beyond the fact Maria Celeste went to the convent and died of dysentery at 33 and Galileo was persecuted by the Church and subsequently denounced his ideas. I wanted to learn so much more about them, and especially about Maria Celeste. She seemed to be an extraordinary person, deeply devoted to her father and responsible for copying hundreds of pages of his manuscripts by hand while keeping up with the demands of convent life.
But instead of really getting to know her the way I wish we had, the play tries to make parallels with the Writer that don’t quite land. The play is less about Galileo’s daughter than about a playwright researching Galileo’s daughter, and therein lies the problem. It’s a valiant effort by Central Square Theater, but it leaves too much to be desired to be a success.
“Galileo’s Daughter,” by Jessica Dickey and directed by Reena Dutt. At Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square, Cambridge, through Dec. 8.
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