BITTER
Even weirder, the play closes with Wilkins’ passionate profession of love for his doomed colleague, who has heaped scorn on him throughout their association. Surely, such a denouement, even if it’s only occurring in Wilkins’ imagination, requires some emotional foreshadowing. In director Simon Levy’s feeling but misguided staging, the obviously talented Billet and Alpert come across as giggling nerd and prim ice queen, respectively. Base poured on acid, they neutralize this potentially combustible experiment.
F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times

SWEET
The entire cast sparkles behind Alpert, whose portrayal of Rosalind’s ruthless efficiency, biting wit and deep pain is a tour de force that brings to mind Meryl Streep’s take on Anna Wintour. This tribute to a woman who helped to crack the Pyrex ceiling reminds us of the need to reexamine “his”tory and should not be missed.
Mayank Keshaviah – LA Weekly

SWEET
Director Simon Levy gives the piece an impeccable production, with an admirable young cast. Alpert combines Franklin’s brusque authority with vivacity and charm, and Billet ably captures Wilkins’ social ineptitude. Norris’ Gosling offers amiable support, while Gould and Grubb are single-mindedly ruthless as the rival scientists, and Hellwig provides yeoman service in an underdeveloped role.
Neal Weaver – Backstage

SWEET
This play which is making its West Coast premiere, moves swiftly, concentrating on a great race and the failure of collaboration for an intermissionless 90 minutes. Intensely exciting and provocative, the themes transcend gender and science and surely will fuel many probing conversations.
Janna J. Monji – LA Examiner

BITTERSWEET
Anna Ziegler’s “Photograph 51,” a play in which characters are regularly peering through microscopes, has the ironic problem of being out of focus. As a piece of history, it spends an inordinate amount of time on broadly comedic scenes of rebuffed male attention and less on the specifics of the main character’s remarkable scientific achievement. The protagonist remains a cipher, and the one possibly important relationship in her life is unexamined and feels merely like a plot device. The Fountain Theater’s West Coast premiere production, however, is polished and entertaining, and it benefits greatly from Aria Alpert’s sharp lead performance.
Terry Morgan – Variety

SWEET
Played by Alpert in the lab scenes with chilly dignity, Rosalind gets her moments of release from Ziegler in scenes where she climbs mountains and screams bad words into the wind or dreams of a love with Caspar in words she never speaks to him. Ziegler superbly sculpts the humanity and emotional lives of these scientists into their race for the prize. The play was the winner of the 2008 Stage International Script Competition for Best New Play About Science and Technology. It well deserves the honor and this production does it justice.
Laura Hitchcock – CurtainUp

SWEET
The no-nonsense Franklin is seen here not simply as a casualty of sexism but also, more dimensionally, as a woman whose loner obstinacy might even have irritated other women scientists – if any of them had been in the labs. Partially because of her premature death at age 37, from a cancer that Ziegler suggests might have been caused by her work in the lab, she assumes a tragic stature that elevates the play and Simon Levy’s staging into an absorbing and touching event, marred only by a rather pro forma and insufficiently introduced romantic interest (Ross Hellwig) and lightened by the droll presence of Franklin’s graduate assistant (Graham Norris).
Don Shirley – LA CityBeat

SWEET
Simon Levy’s outstanding direction heightens the engrossing intimate moments that further fleshes out the characters. Mining scenes of their physical humor and wit, Levy makes the scientific inquiry magical and approachable. There is limited jargon and never confusing or overly burdened specifics, and Levy proves he can juggle a tightly personal expose without losing sight of the headier storyline. Ziegler’s play, which won the 2008 STAGE International Script Competition, tackles the darker side of science while paying much deserved homage to a woman who was the first to see the shape of life, even if she was unable to see the shape of her discovery in the years to come.
MR Hunter – Stagehappenings

SWEET
Don’t be put off by the scientific jargon (for those packing pocket protectors and slide rules its nerd nirvana). Photograph 51 might not be picture perfect, but it’s worth a look.
Mike Buzzelli – EyeSpyLA

SWEET
Interesting as this historical tidbit might be, it would hardly seem food for a fast-moving, funny, suspenseful, and ultimately deeply moving train ride of a play, or so I thought when planning my March and April calendars. Despite the Fountain Theatre’s track record as the only intimate theater to have won the Ovation Award for Best Production a record four times, Anna Zeigler’s Photograph 51 sounded like it might be too esoteric (and maybe even dull) for my tastes. Wrong! Like the rest of the sold-out house (on a Thursday no less!), I was thrilled, enthralled, amused, and moved by this absolutely smashing ninety minutes of simply great theater.
Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA