There’s a gargantuan breakthrough on the horizon, but not at the prestigious South Bay institution located in Palo Alto that specializes in gargantuan breakthroughs.
It’s actually 45 miles away at UC Santa Cruz, where Sanam and Ariel are readying to have their lives changed. Their game-changing discoveries will result in a massive cover story in a glitzy magazine, the many years of their Ph.D. research solving the mystery of colony collapse disorder — when worker bees exit a honey bee colony, leaving the queen with food and nurse bees to care for the immature bees.
If this seems like wonky stuff for a 100-minute play, that is an appropriate view. Lots of details about the critical mass that is the plight of the matriarchal honey bee are funneled directly into the audience, those details shaping what becomes a scintillating, albeit choppy narrative that puts ethics and friendship in the crosshairs of ambition.
The TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and EnActe Arts co-production of sharply-penned “Queen,” by San Jose native Madhuri Shekar, offers many glimpses of various power dynamics. There is not just the pressure of preparing an evil pesticide company takedown, but how women’s agency must function in high-level academia. There’s even the self-immolation one must endure to engage in dating smarmy, insufferable tech bros.
The story’s strength is in how it melds two critical dynamics together. There are moments that force a reckoning between the two students, women who confront a reality that a sliver of wrong data can send an entire study careening towards irrelevance. Yet, does a smidge of fudging critical research really make that much of a difference? After all, the company loaded with deadly pesticides doesn’t face these dilemmas because they have no heart, no conscience.
Sanam (Uma Paranjpe) may not have American citizenship but she is blessed with wealthy parents who can support her PhDreams. Sanam is a slick foil for Ariel (Kjerstine Rose Anderson), who has a more personal motivation to publish, an impetus that borders on survival for her and her small child. Meanwhile, the lead researcher Dr. Hayes (Mike Ryan), sees his own fame and fortune at stake.
While the play has patches that don’t carry the same urgency, director Miriam A. Laube moves the massive swaths of dialogue quite smoothly, despite the play’s penchant for hovering near didacticism at times. Where the play works much more effectively is when it removes itself from its own stasis, forcing its principals to barrel towards a necessary resolution that may destroy each young career.
That barreling is assisted mightily by the two male characters in the narrative, who take turns maximizing smarm and misogyny. Dr. Hayes is all for the work until his comfort is threatened for the sake of accuracy. There is also derivatives trader Arvind (Deven Kolluri), whose advances toward Sanam are devoid of anything a human person should consider potentially successful. Still, whether it’s loneliness or legit charm that Arvind ultimately showcases, the relationship begins to take root a little more than expected.
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As the arc moves towards its resolution, the play begins to exhibit the type of urgency that wasn’t on hand earlier. Dr. Hayes is forced to address what it means when things aren’t going one’s way, ultimately choosing a path where his misogyny bubbles fiercely to the surface, exploiting power dynamics he’s always had at his fingertips.
Ultimately, the strength of the play is in its performances, exhibited on Nina Ball’s exquisite metaphor of a set that constantly reminds of the stickiness and peril that comes with the plight of the honey bee. Paranjpe does well to carry the proceedings with balance, sharpening each beat to a specific end. Anderson’s turn as a peeved academic, one whose status is weaponized against her constantly, roots herself within what she truly loves about the research she’s involved with. Ryan is provided with the most violent language as he exhibits one of the great traits of maleness — making it all about himself. Arvind knows plenty about that, engaging with his own narcissism incessantly. Kolluri is quite funny within Arvind’s cluelessness, maintaining a level of charm that makes a potential connection with Sanam at least a little believable.
Lots of ugliness exists in the world, especially as the marginalized make their way higher up the ladder inside major institutions. But despite the lurking danger, finding allure in the journey is what life is all about.
Put another way, sometimes the queen needs to move along in order for nature and beauty to flourish.
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.
‘QUEEN’
By Madhuri Shekar, presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and Enacte Arts
Through: March 31
Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Running time: 100 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $37-$82; theatreworks.org