COPENHAGEN by Michael Frayn. Royal National Theatre tour.

Tour.

COPENHAGEN
by Michael Frayn.

Royal National Theatre tour.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.

Review Hazel Brown 20 November at Poole Arts Centre.

Science, politics and emotions collide and divide in Frayn's award-winning play.
Nuclear physics and quantum theory seem unlikely subjects to provide gripping drama, but grip and inform Copenhagen certainly does. However, it is the motives and relationships revealed as the three characters circle one another like electrons around a nucleus, that provide the real drama.

Set in the round, with some of the audience on stage as though in a lecture theatre, with only three chairs as props, the action is based on fact. Niels Bohr, a Nobel prizewinning Danish physicist and his wife Margarethe anxiously await a visit from a brilliant former German pupil, Werner Heisenberg. The characters are dead and it is as though they are fated to replay this meeting again and again to fathom the real motives.

The action takes place in the Bohrs' Copenhagen house in 1941, when Denmark is occupied by the Germans. The plot revolves around speculations about why Heisenberg, ostensibly one of the enemy, is visiting his former professor. Is it to find out how far other countries have got in the development of nuclear reaction? Is it to justify why Heisenberg, in effect, prevented the Nazis from being the first to develop the nuclear bomb? Or why?

The performances are masterly. Anna Carteret, in an intelligent performance as the supportive wife, gives a cool commentary on the emotions beneath the surface of the encounter. David Horovitch as Niels Bohr, the founding father of this branch of physics, expounds the theories in simple but passionate terms, making them comprehensible to the layman. Finally, Alexander Hanson as the young lion who rushes headlong into everything, unsure of his own motives, is masterly as the pupil trying to recapture happier past times.

Michael Blakemore received many awards for his direction and it is a real treat to have such a fine production on tour.

Margrethe Bohr: Anna Carteret.
Niels Bohr: David Horovitch.
Werner Heisenberg: Alexander Hanson.

Director: Michael Blakemoe.
Designer: Peter J Davison.
Lighting Design: Mark Henderson.
Sound: Simon Baker.

2001-11-23 02:12:13