Emma Howlett’s Aether arrives with impressive academic credentials—consultations with Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Stanford universities lending gravitas to TheatreGoose’s latest offering, following their acclaimed Her Green Hell and Sisters Three. The feminist voyage through scientific history that has garnered much praise at this year’s Fringe feels certainly ambitious but also potentially constrained by its own intellectualism.
The piece, presented at Summerhall’s Anatomy Room, charts a history of scientific womanhood, from 4th-century Alexandrian teacher Hypatia to physicist Vera Rubin, whose dark matter discoveries anchor the production’s central metaphor. The 19th century “queen of magic,” Adelaide Herrmann, and her partial contemporary, teenage medium Florence Cook add welcome if overly esoteric theatrical flourishes to a quintet completed by a 2026 Cambridge PhD student with Nobel aspirations. This temporal leap however feels more dramaturgically convenient than particularly profound.
Howlett’s consultation with pioneering dark matter researchers yields moments of genuine poetry: “what’s the difference between love and gravity” resonates beyond its scientific context, while the notion of “discovery coming in two forms—genius and luck” captures something essential about both scientific endeavor and theatrical creation. Added to this is an inspired use of overhead projectors that creates visual elegance from simple means.
Yet Aether suffers from its own earnestness. Quite highbrow for most of the rest of feminist rage present at this year’s Fringe, the work reads too often like a cross between an academic essay and a radio play. The ensemble work, while tight, serves up ideas rather than complex flesh and blood characters. Exploring “the thrilling enormity of your ignorance” proves less thrilling than promised when filtered through literary dialogue.
While celebrating women’s scientific contributions remains vital, and Howlett does a great job of it, Aether could do with trusting a bit more in theatre’s own mysterious properties rather than seeking the validation of academic authority.
This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.
This post was written by Duška Radosavljević.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.
