It is difficult to believe the erudite and probing questions posited in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen flowed from the same pen as Noises Off, one of the wackiest backstage farces extant. First premiered in 1998 at London's Royal National Theatre with its first American production in 2000 at Broadway's Royale Theater, Copenhagen details a fictional account of an actual meeting between Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, and German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, who visited Bohr's home in Copenhagen in 1941.
Bohr was considered the originator of 'modern' atomic physics when he realized in 1913 that quantum theory applied to matter as well as to energy Bohr became Heisenberg's mentor when the latter came to work with Bohr in 1924. Heisenberg developed the concept of the uncertainty principle which limited the simultaneous measurement of such variables as position and momentum and of time and energy.
Frayn's underlying question posits what may have happened if Germany had developed the atomic bomb before America. The accounts of the German and American bomb programs, and Heisenberg and Bohr's participation in them, are documented in historical records, as is their impact on Danish Jewry. Bohr, who was part-Jewish, and Heisenberg, had a father-son relationship. The meeting in 1941 actually happened. What they discussed is pure speculation by Frayn, buttressed by historical records and the physicists' prior relationship.
Heisenberg, Bohr, and his wife Margrethe (who functions as narrator/Greek chorus), are long dead as the play opens. Frayn reconstructs the 1941 meeting and what the three might have spoken about. In the words of Margrethe: "We don't do science for ourselves; we do it so we can explain it to others." The play's ending reveals how 8,000 Danish Jews managed to escape Denmark on the eve of the SS invasion designed to capture all the Jews in Denmark.
Frayn's writing is expository and concise. Rene Moreno gives Copenhagen a simple and uncluttered staging; the focus is all on the actors. Jac Alder, Theater Three's co-founding artistic/managing director, does some of his best work ever as Bohr. Craig Bridger, making his T3 debut, although too young by a decade, gives a convincing performance as Heisenberg. Beverly May, the doyenne of Dallas theater, is riveting as Margrethe. Watching her, it is difficult to imagine anyone else playing the part. May's magnetism is apparent even when she is not speaking.
While Copenhagen is all talk and intellectualizing with little action, it is definitely worth seeing for those with intellectual curiosity or those who just want to experience some top-notch acting.
