February 12-18, 2004

theater

Life Science

Nuclear family: Charles McMahon, Paul Nolan and Sally Mercer try to unravel the mysteries of the Bohr-Heisenberg meeting in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen.

by Toby Zinman

Of all the fundamental ideas of modern physics with philosophical fallout -- those immense ideas that suggest immense non-mathematical truths, like chaos and entropy, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle seems the richest and most tantalizing. To have a principle -- which surely implies certainty -- about uncertainty, is to find a metaphor for life as we live it.

Michael Frayn's brilliant and engrossing play is about the two great physicists, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg: "And from those two heads the future will emerge." There is nothing less at stake than the outcome of World War II, and one of several profound mysteries the play examines is why German science did not supply Hitler with the atomic bomb.

The play opens with the perfect question: "But why?" The premise is that the three characters -- Heisenberg, Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, -- are long dead and thus free to try to solve the much-debated historical mystery: What did those two men say to each other when they met in occupied Copenhagen during World War II? From that first question, we will learn -- if we pay close attention (this is not the show if you're looking for relaxing entertainment) -- a lot about nuclear fission and a lot about history, but mostly we will learn a lot about these three rich characters: their complicated friendship and their private griefs. And beyond that we will learn a lot about people in general: the unreliability of memory, the impossibility of understanding anybody else's motives and the elusiveness of one's own.

Using a nearly bare stage, with nearly no action (the actors walk once in a while, they sit on chairs occasionally), this is a language-driven play, requiring much the same precision as scientific calculations: When you're talking about Uranium 238 as opposed to Uranium 235, you cannot approximate dialogue. Sally Mercer's performance as Margrethe is the most subtle and emotionally nuanced (a tinge of irritation in her voice, an instant's impatience in a gesture), while Charles McMahon's physical stiffness reveals too little of Heisenberg's personality, giving us neither puppy dog enthusiasm nor brilliant arrogance. Paul Nolan shifts convincingly from Bohr's legendary lovable warmth to moral outrage. All three compel us to listen, which is exactly what the play requires and what happens so rarely in contemporary theater.

Director Dugald MacArthur underutilizes the intimacy of St. Stephen's Theater by having his three fine actors do a little too little. The lighting, which should provide a visual analogue to the drama, as well as to the particle-wave physics, seems haphazard and unreadable. The structure of the play has scenes replayed with variations, and we should feel the repetition through repeated action ("But why did I come? And once again I go through the evening in 1941. My feet crunch over the familiar gravel. "), but there is something too stock-still about this production. Too much of the dialogue seems directly addressed to the audience, depriving us of the delicious dramatic shock of the shifts between narration and conversation.

When Bohr gently chastises his wife for "her tendency to make everything personal," she replies, "Everything is personal!" Frayn's triumph in Copenhagen is exactly that: making physics personal.

COPENHAGEN

Through Feb. 29, Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephen’s Theater, 10th and Ludlow sts., 215-829-9002

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