Michael Frayn's drama, Copenhagen, returns with a frightening urgency – yet this production fails to always ignite its emotional core.
Arifa Akbar/The Guardian
Paapa Essiedu recently spoke about returning only to works that speak to the present moment. Frayn's 1998 drama fits the bill perfectly. A far-right politician who threatens to destroy an entire civilization is at the center of this three-character story about atomic physics and its consequences amidst violence and political struggle.
The story is based on the real-life 1941 meeting between Dane Niels Bohr (Richard Schiff) and German Werner Heisenberg (Damien Molony), two prominent quantum scientists on opposing sides during World War II. The wild leader is Hitler, but the echoes of Donald Trump couldn't be clearer, considering his latest genocidal fantasy in the war with Iran.
These eerie echoes make Michael Longhurst’s production extremely relevant. It’s a beautiful production, and the dense scientific conversation in the second half is understandable (it’s not as elusive as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at the Old Vic), but it often fails to reveal the deeper metaphors and meanings of the science. The tension comes and goes, and the dialogue doesn’t fully convey the characters’ emotional torment, as in Heisenberg’s speech about his flawed but beloved German “homeland.”
The chemistry between the characters doesn't quite work. Bohr was 16 years older than Heisenberg and had once been his teacher. When they met, both had won Nobel Prizes. In this production, the age difference seems too great and weakens the dynamic between them. Heisenberg comes across as a tense university student, while Bohr comes across as a retired professor (Schiff sometimes gets confused with the text).
They don't have the intimacy or tension of friends, competitors, or rivals. Alex Kingston gives a strong performance as Bohr's wife and editor, Margrethe, bringing much of the work's humanity but carrying most of the emotional burden.
Bohr was half-Jewish; Heisenberg worked on Germany’s nuclear program. No one knows why they met at that moment or what was said. Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle—that we cannot have complete knowledge of the position or behavior of subatomic particles—extends metaphorically to the psychological uncertainty that followed this meeting. Frayn offers several hypotheses and conflicting recollections.
The drama feels slow at times, despite the mystery and extraordinary set design by Joanna Scotcher: an unrealistic circle surrounded by water, visually referencing the “heavy water” used by the Nazis for bombs, as well as the boat accident in which one of Bohr’s children was lost.
The work deals with the possibility of friendship across ideological divides, as well as the moral duty of scientists. However, the lack of reference to the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima seems like a major gap. The focus is on the fear that Hitler would acquire nuclear weapons, while their use by the US and the devastating effects on Japan remain all but forgotten. This gives the production a dated feel, especially at a time when American military imperialism is manifesting itself in disturbing ways. /GazetaExpress/
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