Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen...
May. 17th, 2002 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saxikathI've just returned from seeing Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, on tour here in Boston. I'd read the play, and thought it was amazing.
Now that I've seen it, I think so even more.
It's an extraordinary combination of history of science, examination of human morality and conscience, and musing on why we do what we do, and whether we can ever really understand ourselves. The play has only three characters: Danish physicist Niels Bohr, his wife Margrethe, and German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who was once Bohr's student. Heisenberg was one of the few physicists who remained in Germany after the Nazis came to power.
In 1941, Heisenberg went to visit Bohr in occupied Denmark. They went on a ten-minute walk. Something was said during that time that basically destroyed their friendship. Nobody knows exactly what. It probably concerned atomic research; whether Heisenberg went to warn Bohr that the Germans were developing a bomb, or to tell him they weren't, or to find out if the Americans were -- nobody really knows for sure.
Frayn gives us the three principals, meeting again after death, and trying to address just what happened. That's really only the starting point, though; in the course of trying to determine what happened, they range through their pioneering work in physics, and they apply some of the principles -- less precisely -- to human interactions.
Len Cariou as Bohr was magnificent. He was Bohr; he was "in the skin" of the character to the extent that you forgot he wasn't Bohr. Mariette Hartley as Margrethe and Hank Stratton as Heisenberg were less stunning; they were more obviously acting their characters rather than living in them. Margrethe came across a little stiff, and Heisenberg a little too smarmy, though both were notably better in the second act than the first. (In Hartley's defense, Margrethe has more interesting things to do in the second act.) Still, despite that, they were still extremely interesting to watch, and conveyed the characters well. Plus, they had such great material to work with.
The staging was different from anything I've seen before. There was a round area with three chairs in it, and extending from it a wedge that ran to the single entrance (used only at the beginning and end of the acts). The three actors moved around in ways clearly inspired by the physics under discussion -- lots of "orbiting" around the center of the stage, and shifting positions. The lighting was effective; I heard one person at intermission call it distracting, but I didn't find it so. They had also built a gallery of seats actually on the stage, behind the actors, so the show was done somewhat in the round.
It is by nature a highly cerebral play, one you have to pay close attention to and think about pretty hard, but there are also lighter moments, and some real emotional power as well. In short, if you get a chance, see it. Especially if Cariou is still playing Bohr.
Now that I've seen it, I think so even more.
It's an extraordinary combination of history of science, examination of human morality and conscience, and musing on why we do what we do, and whether we can ever really understand ourselves. The play has only three characters: Danish physicist Niels Bohr, his wife Margrethe, and German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who was once Bohr's student. Heisenberg was one of the few physicists who remained in Germany after the Nazis came to power.
In 1941, Heisenberg went to visit Bohr in occupied Denmark. They went on a ten-minute walk. Something was said during that time that basically destroyed their friendship. Nobody knows exactly what. It probably concerned atomic research; whether Heisenberg went to warn Bohr that the Germans were developing a bomb, or to tell him they weren't, or to find out if the Americans were -- nobody really knows for sure.
Frayn gives us the three principals, meeting again after death, and trying to address just what happened. That's really only the starting point, though; in the course of trying to determine what happened, they range through their pioneering work in physics, and they apply some of the principles -- less precisely -- to human interactions.
Len Cariou as Bohr was magnificent. He was Bohr; he was "in the skin" of the character to the extent that you forgot he wasn't Bohr. Mariette Hartley as Margrethe and Hank Stratton as Heisenberg were less stunning; they were more obviously acting their characters rather than living in them. Margrethe came across a little stiff, and Heisenberg a little too smarmy, though both were notably better in the second act than the first. (In Hartley's defense, Margrethe has more interesting things to do in the second act.) Still, despite that, they were still extremely interesting to watch, and conveyed the characters well. Plus, they had such great material to work with.
The staging was different from anything I've seen before. There was a round area with three chairs in it, and extending from it a wedge that ran to the single entrance (used only at the beginning and end of the acts). The three actors moved around in ways clearly inspired by the physics under discussion -- lots of "orbiting" around the center of the stage, and shifting positions. The lighting was effective; I heard one person at intermission call it distracting, but I didn't find it so. They had also built a gallery of seats actually on the stage, behind the actors, so the show was done somewhat in the round.
It is by nature a highly cerebral play, one you have to pay close attention to and think about pretty hard, but there are also lighter moments, and some real emotional power as well. In short, if you get a chance, see it. Especially if Cariou is still playing Bohr.
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Date: 2002-05-18 04:41 am (UTC)There was a nice set of three related articles in last July's Physics Today about the play, the people, and the physics of nuclear fission. If you have access to a science library, I recommend it as great post-play reading.