The play takes place in the rooms of Isaac Newton at Cambridge University in
September 1693, when Newton went through what subsequent biographers would call a “discomfiture of the mind.” Newton’s tragic past, conflicted sexuality, heretical religious beliefs, and alchemical experimentation had led him to lock himself away in his rooms and to do nothing less than attempt to touch the face of God.

Arrogant, paranoid, and absolutely certain that he had been chosen by God to reveal
the eternal unity of all things in the universe, the play takes place in a crucible-like
atmosphere where Newton’s most ambitious work would finally come to fruition. Or
failure. It features Newton’s friend, the philosopher John Locke, and Newton’s nemesis, Dr. Robert Hooke, a brilliant polymath and devoted ladies’ man, whose jealousy of Newton unhinged him from time to time.

Finally, the play features the mysterious woman with whom Newton became
“embroiled.” Based on Newton’s letters and journals, the play reveals a man riding the
delicate line between divinity and madness, grappling with the choice between
immortality and love, and lays bare the fact that while many people regard Newton as
humanity’s first scientist, he was actually our last sorcerer.