How different would the world have looked had the Nazis been the first to build an atomic bomb? Werner Heisenberg, one of Hitler's lead nuclear scientists, famously and mysteriously met in Copenhagen with his colleague and mentor, Niels Bohr, one of the founders of the Manhattan Project. Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning drama imagines their reunion. Joined by Niels' wife, Margrethe, these three brilliant minds converge for an encounter of atomic proportions.
An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Alfred Molina as Niels Bohr; Shannon Cochran as Margrethe Bohr; and David Krumholtz as Werner Heisenberg. Directed by Martin Jarvis. Recorded before a live audience at the James Bridges Theater at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in November, 2011.
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"I saw this play on Broadway in 2000--the year it won the Tony for best play--and loved it. Since I've had a horrible run of books, I decided to change my luck and read something I knew I would love. Good call on my part. Such a joy to re-experience this amazing study of three people (Danish Physicist Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe, and German Physicist Werner Heisenberg) as they, in a very quantum way, try to figure out why Heisenberg came to Copenhagen in 1941 to meet with Bohr and what he said to him that night during a walk that so upset Bohr that it ended a friendship that was so strong it was nearly father/son. I will be honest: when I saw this in the theater, at least a third of the audience left at intermission. It's not for the meek: Michael Frayn assumes you've got some basic knowledge about history and physics, and he's not going to dumb it down for you. Which I loved. There is also humor in the play, but it's physics humor. The story reboots several times as observers interact to try to figure out how they impacted the events of that fateful night, how other events impacted their perception of that night, and even if they can really ever understand their own or anyone else's behavior.
My favorite lines from the play are these:
"We put man back at the center of the universe. Throughout history we keep finding ourselves displaced. We keep exiling ourselves to the periphery of things. First we turn ourselves into a mere adjunct of God's unknowable purposes, tiny figures keeling in the great cathedral of creation. And no sooner have we recovered ourselves in the Renaissance, no sooner has man become, as Protagoras proclaimed him, the measure of all things, than we're pushed aside again by the products of our own reasoning! We're dwarfed again as physicists build the great new cathedrals for us to wonder at--the laws of classical mechanics that predate us from the beginning of eternity , that will survive us to eternity's end, that exist whether we exist or not. Until we come to the beginning of the twentieth century, and we're suddenly forced to rise from our knees again."
"It starts with Einstein."
"It starts with Einstein. He shows that measurement--measurement on which the whole possibility of science depends--measurement is not an impersonal event that occurs with impartial universality. It's a human act, carried out from a specific point of view in time and space, from the one particular viewpoint of a possible observer. Then, here in Copenhagen in those three years in the mid-twenties we discover that there is no precisely determinable objective universe. That the universe exists only as a series of approximations. Only within the limits determined by our relationship with it. Only through the understanding lodged inside the human head."
This one stands out for me (can you imagine having to learn these lines??) but there are tons more of gems in this play. It's dense material--and I mean of course the definition that goes with matter not the one that means stupid--but it's moving and at times funny. And chilling. These men and their friendship and its demise intersected with a terrible point in history: they weren't at odds over a fence line, it literally was the fate of the free world.
If you want to view it, there is a--how to put this tactfully? Oh to hell with it--dumbed down version from PBS available on netflix with Daniel Craig playing Heisenberg. They cut out a lot of dialogue, what humor there is in the play is gone from this, and they've chosen to show it as a traditional production rather than as the play is produced (in tight quarters to mimic the atom--or a courtroom: in the stage production, a small part of the audience sits on stage looking down on the actors from a high rounded area, like a tribunal). I don't know that the story is actually helped by all the space and lush settings the PBS production has put in. They are distractions to the plot. They also use voiceovers to help the viewer (I guess) but it's confusing, I think--although perhaps others find the play confusing with it all being dialogue no matter when the action takes place (it's quantum--it's not always linear). The DVD comes with a prologue and epilogue from the playwright, which are informative and well done.
A lovely interlude and now I'm off to try new things again and probably hit some real duds. But that's okay. I'll always have Copenhagen."
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Gerri (5 out of 5 stars)