The Big Story, the discovery of the structure of DNA and the extraordinary little tale of the last years of the life of scientist Rosalind Franklin. We are confronted with one of the most shocking and controversial events in the history of scientific thought and knowledge. All mankind bows and rejoices in one triumphant applause toward the great scientists who succeeded in deciphering what was commonly referred to as “the secret of life.” The Affair, however, was anything but epic and noble. The characters involved in this discovery were many, all influential scientists who collaborated at different stages on the same research, but who were victims and executioners, depending on their alternating fortunes, mutual envy and personal desires for redemption.They all struggled to have a personal place of prominence in History, each with their own abilities and driven by personal motivations, sometimes even noble ones, but always and in any case to the detriment of the sixth character in this story, the only woman in this fable, a wonderful and detestable woman, a limpid and contradictory person, ambitious and cowardly, in short, a woman outside human categorizations and impossible to tell: Rosalind Franklin. The text wraps just like a double spiral around her, around her ugliness and her grace. It was to her credit that she photographed a DNA sample with a most delicate and complex technique using X-ray diffraction. In particular, photograph number 51, she succeeded in capturing the X of the DNA double helix more sharply. A great giftRosalind gave to science, humanity and herself. The highly ambitious James Watson, with the complicity of his colleague Francis Crick, exploited the photograph to build a model of DNA, go down in history as the one truly responsible for the “great discovery,” and also win the Nobel Prize, nine years later, by which time poor Rosalind had already prematurely passed away at the age of 37.In the course of the play, the characters continuously jump from a present, which is undefined, to a past, which is that of memory, that of “scenes,” in which the Story of the discovery of DNA intersects with Rosalind’s story.The scenes, then, alternate with the comments and dissertations of the characters in the present, in a continuous succession of images that are distorted, untrue or inconsistent in the judgment of our educated logic, but which inevitably contribute to enriching and composing that film or dream that slowly unfurls serenely and perfectly fulfilled in our minds
