![]() Three plain, pale wooden chairs sit atop a black floor painted with intersecting circles and triangles. We're not supposed to know if this character should be admired or feared, and Bridger maintains just the right balance of hero and villain in his persona.įor the set, designer Jasper Ashley Pounds has kept the acting space blessedly light and spare. When the tensions between Bohr and Heisenberg threaten to reach meltdown status, Margrethe is there calmly offering "Tea, anyone?" Her character humanizes the high-flown arguments, and Frayn cleverly allows her to serve as translator for those among us who haven't cracked a science book since high school.Ĭraig Bridger's Heisenberg is the toughest role to carry off. Her solid presence balances the triangle formed by the play's trio of strong characters. Lovely Beverly May, a veteran actress who's worked in Dallas for many years, makes a warm, smart Margrethe. Director Rene Moreno has stripped Jac Alder of his quirky mannerisms, and here Alder achieves a quiet, mature, finely tuned performance. Certainly Copenhagen is Theatre Three's finest production this season. Major elements-directing, acting, design-have been handled with great care. This material is challenging to absorb and must be incredibly difficult to perform. The cast at Theatre Three expertly hits every note. ![]() Bit by bit, layers of secrets and lies peel away and Heisenberg's real motives become clear.įrayn paces the dialogue as delicately as a fugue. It is rich with geometric repetitions and overlapping plot lines. (Bohr later would join the American scientific team at Los Alamos, where he helped build the bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)įor all of its talk of isotopes and uranium 235, Copenhagen unfolds like a gripping psychological mystery. But Bohr wants to believe that Heisenberg might deliberately be bungling the computations of critical mass to handicap the Third Reich's development of the atomic bomb. Or does he? The young scientist could put Germany ahead of the Allies in the arms race, a prospect too horrifying to consider. ![]() But to build a workable nuclear reactor, he needs Bohr's help with the final calculations. ![]() Heisenberg, however, has stayed behind to continue his research for Hitler's atomic weapons project. The great Jewish scientists have fled Germany for England and the United States. Bohr and his wife, Margrethe (Beverly May), have good reason to suspect that the visitor has a dangerous purpose. In Act 1, Heisenberg turns up unexpectedly at the Copenhagen home of Bohr, who is half Jewish and fearful of imminent deportation to a death camp. It is the why behind the angry blow-up that forms the nucleus of the play. The two had revolutionized the scientific world by splitting the atom but split as friends and colleagues after a brief, covert meeting in Copenhagen in 1941. He based it on the real-life relationship between the loyal German scientist Werner Heisenberg (played by Craig Bridger) and his mentor, Danish physicist Niels Bohr (Jac Alder). And it's fascinating.įrayn's witty, philosophical script-part fact, part writerly speculation-won the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play. They talk quantum ethics, matrix calculus and fission the way other men toss around baseball stats. For three hours in Michael Frayn's fact-based Copenhagen, nearly perfect in the impressive production at Theatre Three, two brilliant World War II-era scientists discuss the splitting of the atom and the scary prospects of nuclear Armageddon. This is a glowing review for a play about plutonium.
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