Copenhagen
From 27th October 2003
To 1st November 2003
by
Michael Frayn
Description
In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a strange trip to Copenhagen
to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends, and their
work together had opened the way into the atom. But now they were on opposite
sides of a world war, and the meeting ended in disaster.
Scientists and historians have argued ever since about why Heisenberg went, and what the two men said. Copenhagen retraces their journey through the mysteries of the world around us - and on into the even stranger mysteries of the world within.
The play won both the 1998 Evening Standard and 1998 Critics’ Circle Awards
for 'Best New Play'.
“the play is a profound and haunting meditation on the mysteries of human motivation. It is also a poignant love story of sorts, the older scientist seeking, and then feeling betrayed by, a substitute son.” The Independent
“A brilliant play…I emerged deeply moved by his simultaneous awareness of life's value and its inexplicable mystery". The Guardian”
The Nonentities in the Studio (A)
Director's Notes
Some studio plays live and die in the black box spaces they were made for; they do something different to the main house fare of the theatre maybe hitting local interests or an alternative audience, maybe taking experimentation a little too far, maybe dealing with minority interest material; and then they are heard of no more.
Of course, a writer of the quality of Michael Frayn is less likely to produce something unmemorable; but, on the surface of it, Copenhagen, the story of what may have happened between two eminent physicists in 1941, could well have been sidelined as theatrical caviar not really for general consumption even if the studio it started in was the Cottesloe Theatre, the National Theatre’s third performing space.
The play – despite its small cast – outgrew that space, of course, and has played on Broadway and been on a world tour. What has made it such a success is that it is more than the encounter between Heisenberg and Bohr; indeed in some ways can be seen to speak of the twentieth century as a whole and, of course, in 1998 theatres were looking for plays which dealt with millennial or retrospective subjects. However, I personally believe Frayn’s real achievement is to make Copenhagen still more resonant than one particular century: this is a drama that plays on notions of uncertainty and that concept doesn’t just mean matters of atomic physics.
The form of the play is very intriguing: a memory play for spirits. The shades of two scientists re-play what happened between them, although sometimes it is what might have happened. Is this what the after life is like? A constant wondering about the why and how of motivation? Frayn starts the play with the statement that “Some questions have no answers to find” so why construct a whole play about an empty goal? And why is it the scientists he focuses on are important but not necessarily the first names on the tongue of Joe Public as Galileo or Newton might be? Frayn shows us that we never really know about the internal workings of the heart and that what we know about the world around us is possibly flawed. If asked, most would say that Einstein is the father of atomic physics but in this drama Bohr is the father – in more ways than one. He is accompanied by his wife Margrethe, a clever theatrical role which seems desperately true but was probably the result of much less painstaking research than the characterisation of the two physicists. Margrethe works as the audience’s friend struggling to keep up with the heavy discussions, more interested in family than photons, trying to keep the peace but no fool and not happy to have her domestic world re-made even though moves are afoot to transform the political and physical landscape. Into this relationship comes Heisenberg. Is he friend or foe? Victim or hero?
Of course, boiling the play down in this way suggests it is just a variation on the eternal triangle or a spin on the old maxim “two’s company, three’s a crowd”. It is much more: an enquiry into loss, a meditation on German war operations, beautiful poetry, a stunning sequence of rhythmic repetitions, an illustration of the need for but neglect of family values and the marvel of music and mathematics. Not a play I should like to say I fully understand, it shifts and re-settles; throws out demanding concepts in the midst of coffee cups and ski-ing memories; teases us with what is known and well documented before landing us at “some event that will never quite be located or defined”, “that final core of uncertainty at the heart of things”.
Martin Drury