There's a slight stiffness to the proceedings in Mary L. Smith's production of Lauren Gunderson's story of Henrietta Leavitt and her fellow "computers," working at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, tallying the stars without ever getting to look through the telescope. A hesitance in speech, a reticence in emotion, a rectitude of movement. It's entirely possible that all this is a directorial choice — the play makes it clear that this was an era when women were constrained, even women who had been to Radcliffe ("basically Harvard in skirts"), then left their small towns in Wisconsin and gotten jobs for themselves in the big city. Why wasn't it enough for Leavitt to stay home and look up at the heavens? Because she wasn't sure the heavens were what her pastor father said they were, and what's more, she wasn't sure where home was. Where Wisconsin was. Where Earth was — relative to the rest of the universe. This sort of slip between astronomical reality and existential experience runs throughout the play. Sometimes, it works to great effect, as when Leavitt has her big breakthrough at the end of Act One (after returning home, no less). Other times, particularly towards the play's end, it gets a bit too abstruse to really hit home. But constrained or not, the cast exhibits real appeal, and communicates genuine warmth in their relationships, even in the midst of conflict. Whatever the stiffness, it is overcome by sweetness.

The story may be built around Leavitt's struggle to do "real work" and get that work recognized, but the play's real concern is Leavitt herself, and her recognition of what that work — and her life —means.