Made-in-Manitoba play tackles love, string theory — with mixed results

"The Bible shows us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."

That quote — attributed to Galileo Galilei, one of the fathers of modern science — suggests that while faith and science can co-exist, they represent different ways of seeing the world around us.

But what if, beyond faith and science, there were another, deeper way to understand the workings of the universe?

That question is at the heart of How the Heavens Go, a brand new play from Winnipeg playwright Joseph Aragon (known mainly for his hit Fringe Festival musicals including Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare) seeing its premiere at Prairie Theatre Exchange.

It's a wildly ambitious piece that aims to put a fresh spin on the science-versus-faith debate, with detours into romance and theoretical physics thrown into the mix.

It feels like a very artistic science experiment — and like most experiments, it's not always entirely successful but intriguing nonetheless.

The play follows the story of a terminally ill former anthropology professor named Mary — played by local fave Debbie Patterson, charming as a carefree spirit in her final "frankly, I don't give a damn" days.

She's remarkably glib about her situation: "I'm the healthiest dying woman who ever lived," she quips to her nurse, Carmen (a character who exists mostly as a plot device, unfortunately, but is played solidly by Daria Puttaert).

However, before she goes Mary has one last contribution to make to scientific knowledge — she's volunteered for an experimental drug treatment that's intended to make the process of dying less traumatic for palliative patients.

But the drug has an unintended side effect: It allows Mary to see the universe at the subatomic level — or so she says.

Her stolidly scientific friend, a physics prof named Robert (Ross McMillan, who brings a comically weird intensity to the role and lands plenty of laughs with his spot-on deadpan delivery) is having none of it.

When her increasingly intense visions spark scientific breakthroughs for him, though, the odd couple have to grapple with the notion that they may be on the verge of unlocking something that transcends both faith and science.

With all of that, there's a lot going on in the two-hour drama. Sometimes, it stumbles under the weight. A fair bit of the dialogue — which has to lift heavy ideas about everything from string theory to music thanatology — doesn't flow as naturally as it should, and feels outright cumbersome in points.

The relationship between Mary and Robert — the heart of the play — also doesn't quite take off, mainly because it's never quite clear what's drawn these two wildly different people together in the first place.

Mary's trippy sojourns into the subatomic world, where everything is "crackling and shimmering," she says, present another challenge — it's an awfully hard thing to depict onstage. The dialogue and Patterson's almost Keanu-esque "woahs" as she trips out sometimes aren't convincing.

But here, director Robert Metcalfe's production gets a lift from Scott Henderson's evocative and striking lighting design — which makes great use of a series of bare hanging bulbs that wink, pulse and flash as Mary experiences her visions — as well as from some beautifully delicate and ethereal music by sound designer Danny Carroll.

Where How the Heavens Go really engages, though, is in how positively brimming with big ideas it is. Mary and Robert's trip through an undiscovered country beyond science plays to our innate curiosity. How much you'll enjoy it, I suspect, depends on how much your own curiosity trumps the play's flaws.

It's a bold but imperfect play, and it won't be to everyone's liking. But even if it falls short of being heavenly, it certainly shoots for the stars.

How the Heavens Go runs at Prairie Theatre Exchange until March 18.