Ada and the Engine
Reviewed by Stephen Fife
Theatre Unleashed
Through April 7
Okay, serious theatergoers, who do you think was the most produced playwright in the United States last year?
Arthur Miller? Tennessee Williams? August Wilson? Christopher Durang?
Nope. It was Lauren Gunderson.
Though only 37, Gunderson has had over 20 plays produced, most of them focusing on “female figures in history, science and literature” (to quote her Wikipedia page). Such a play is Ada and the Engine, which is the first production by Theatre Unleashed in their 2019 season at studio/stage.
The play revolves around Ada Byron Lovelace, the only “legitimate” child of the Romantic poet Lord Byron. (Byron also fathered a daughter with his half-sister.) Ada is a fascinating historical figure, a genuine math prodigy with a metaphysical outlook who attempted to merge scientific exploration with literary humanism. She has been the subject of other speculative works, most notably Romulus Linney’s play Childe Byron (about Byron’s relationship with his daughter) and the 1997 film Conceiving Ada, in which Ada is portrayed by Tilda Swinton.
Ada’s legacy (such as it is) is based on the voluminous notes she wrote to accompany her translation from Italian of inventor Charles Babbage’s lectures about “an Analytic Machine” that is often seen as a precursor of the modern computer. Gunderson concocts from this and other source material an audience-pleasing feminist fable about a brilliant young woman afflicted with poor health who finds her soulmate but is prevented from marrying him by constricting social mores, but still finds a way to express her originality and change the future in the process.
This fable bears little relation to historical reality. Ada’s “soulmate” Charles Babbage was actually 25 years her senior, looked like a thin-lipped Victorian banker and never seriously considered a romantic liaison with Ada, a sickly young woman with a domineering mother. Was Ada really a math genius who could be called “the first computer programmer?” Some experts say yes, but many more express doubt that she would ever have received so much attention if she hadn’t been Lord Byron’s offspring. (One undeniable truth is that she gave birth to three children with a man she was pressured to marry — something that certainly contributed to her deteriorating health.)
Of course, what matters here is Gunderson’s myth, not the historical facts, and director Heidi Powers does everything possible to bolster the feminist origin story. As Babbage she’s cast Alex Knox, a tall, strapping young man with rock star hair, streaked with gray to indicate age. Ada’s husband-to-be is played by Gregory Crafts, a founding member of Theatre Unleashed who is even taller than Knox and towers over Jessie Sherman’s Ada. Sherman plays Ada as the round peg who doesn’t fit in the square holes that her mother Anabella (Denise Nicholson) keeps trying to squeeze her into. There is a lovely quality to Sherman’s performance, a bouncy wit born of her character’s boredom with convention and need for intellectual stimulation. Sherman, slight of build with brown ringlets piled on her head, also radiates a winning awareness of the odds stacked against a penniless young woman with a “disgraceful” lineage (as the daughter of Byron, an outcast) who nevertheless believed in her own distinctive destiny.
Costume designer Denise Barrett does an excellent job in outfitting the tall males, and Ada’s droll garb looks like something George Sand might have worn after reading Wuthering Heights. I did have issues with Barrett’s ill-fitting costume for Mary Somerville (Michelle Holmes), which made her look a bit like walking upholstery. Kevin Hilton does an impressive job with the projections, which help bring us into the world of Ada’s volatile imagination.
On the whole, Heidi Powers and her collaborators work well together in creating that feminist myth of triumph and transcendence — except when the script lets them down. This is especially the case at the end, where Gunderson tries to do too much and the play stumbles over its own ambitions. Still, Theatre Unleashed does itself proud with this production, which demonstrates their dedication to the art of theater and a refusal to be stymied by a small budget, just as Ada herself refused to be defeated by the many powerful forces arrayed against her.
studio/stage, 520 N. Western Ave., East Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through Apr. 7. (818) 849-4039 or Reservations@TheatreUnleashed.org. Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission.
