Nucleus, directed by Andrea James and written by Alana Valentine, is a brief and brilliant spectacle that knocked our socks off. It’s about two people who hate each other’s guts, have completely polarised stances on nuclear energy, and have incredible chemistry. It features only two characters: Gabriel Hulst, played by Peter Kowitz, and Cassie Logart, played by Paula Arundell. Gabriel is pro-nuclear energy, and regularly attends conferences where he preaches its benefits. Cassie, his arch-enemy, protests against nuclear energy and actively works to oppose all of Gabriel’s work.
For the first twenty minutes of the show, we are alone with Kowitz, as he goes to great lengths to express just how much Gabriel disagrees with Cassie. We see every skill he’s developed over his long career shine under the spotlight, and it really feels like he relishes the role.
Arundell, meanwhile, is a treasure to watch. She briskly enters the stage in a red dressing gown with a pack of cards, flinging at Kowitz a list of symptoms of nuclear radiation and demanding him to act them out, in a game of “fallout bingo.” Watching Kowitz twist himself in knots trying to portray fainting, hair loss, and vomiting, and then Arundell careen from comedy into sincerity, feels like whiplash. Kowitz’s character is so patently helpless compared to Arundell’s, even though they seem to possess an equal intellect. Each of them has strong and intelligent arguments in favour of and against nuclear energy, but Arundell’s character has a sort of feminine power and lust for life which leaves Kowitz’s character, and us, entranced.
Although I’d been given a heads up by Alana Valentine that the stage would be tilted in a shallow slant, I was surprised to see Paula Arundell tottering around in heels and a sleek little black dress. The fight director, Tim Dashwood, had spent weeks training Arundell and Kowitz to balance on the stage without compromising their energy and flair, and it shows.
One of the most clever moments of the play is when Gabriel recounts his experience meeting a woman at the International Commission on Radiological Protection; he’s completely caught off guard by her and doesn’t have any idea who she is. Right after telling us how “a very attractive woman smiled at me” and this led to certain “biologically predictable” consequences, he admits feebly that “that was how I first met Cassie Logart.”
The plot is tightly woven and keeps us on tenterhooks. It goes to show how deeply you can be connected to a person whom you’ve spent hardly any time with, when Cassie reveals with a disarming candor, “The other thing that made the encounter linger, of course, was the pregnancy.”
Cassie chooses to keep the baby, because she wanted one and was able to pass it off as her partner’s. As she steamrolls on we are left wondering how it is possible to carry and hide such a heavy secret, especially when Gabriel describes that fateful night as “the worst mistake of my life.” As they keep meeting each other at conferences and protests and dancing around in a spite-fuelled limbo, their life passes before us, and their pride is laid bare.
It is astonishing and heartbreaking how cruel they are to each other, how each barb hides a cry for help and a secret yearning. Gabriel goes so far as to say, “If you were dying, I wouldn’t spit on your grave.” Cassie keeps protesting against nuclear energy, and puts every scrap of energy into opposing Gabriel and everything he stands for. Gabriel keeps promoting the use of nuclear energy at international scientific conferences because he genuinely believes that it will do good in the world, and that it’s a better and safer alternative to fossil fuels.
Eventually they confront one another, after what seems like years, or perhaps even decades. Cassie whips out an actual beta-ray protection suit (Arundell’s costumes are surprisingly elaborate given how brief the performance is), and uses it to bluntly break the news that she’s dying from nuclear radiation.
Cassie half-asks, half-demands Gabriel to be her executor, and uses that to strong-arm him into preventing a nuclear energy facility being built at Jervis Bay. This facility is one of the driving forces of the play, as the Jervis Bay Nuclear Power Plant was the only reactor ever seriously considered for construction in Australia.
When Gabriel says “You broke my heart,” she responds, “You captured mine and never let it go.” Arundell and Kowitz are relentless with the emotional gut-punches, and they make every sentence venomous, heartfelt, or even both at once.
Despite all the effort that they go through over the decades, they cannot stay apart. Their chemistry is undeniable, and they have a connection so strong it brings nuclear fusion to mind. At the end, though, it feels like a tragedy. There is so much time that has been wasted, and so much love that has gone unspoken. They say to each other, cutting each other off mid-sentence and repeating the other as if in wedding vows, “I wanted you to be someone else, but you can only be you.” The lights dim, with Cassie lying dead in Gabriel’s arms and their intertwining legacies stretching out ahead of them; everyone in the audience is reaching into their bags for a Kleenex. We are left with the sombre reminder that there is only so much time you have to tell people that you love them.
‘Nucleus’ is playing from the 14th of February to the 15th of March at the Seymour Centre.
