Drama on 3 - Copenhagen

[Guest]

Listen!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ppwn6

[gurnemanz]

We saw this excellent play at the Theatre Royal Bath, sitting actually on the stage behind the action, very close to the actors, which made it even more compelling. The performing area was a circular piece of stage - like the Earth whose future (or potential lack of future) they were debating. Heisenberg's story is fascinating and I was quite well prepared, having just read a very good book on the subject.

Thanks for the tip on Turn of the Screw.

[kleines c]

Why the German physicist Werner Heisenberg went to Copenhagen in 1941 and what he wanted to say to the Danish physicist Niels Bohr are questions which have exercised historians of nuclear physics ever since, gurnemanz. In Michael Frayn's now classic play, An_Inspector_Calls, Heisenberg meets Bohr and his wife Margrethe once again to look for the answers, and to work out, just as they had once worked out the internal functioning of the atom, how we can ever know why we do what we do?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_(play)#Historical_debate

Emma Harding has produced and directed Michael Frayn's play about the controversial meeting in 1941 between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, friends who now found themselves on opposing sides in Hitler's war. Here on The Radio 3 Blog, Emma describes the concept and the casting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/2013/01/copenhagen---the-directors-blo.shtml

If you have never seen the film version of 'Copenhagen', french frank, ask a relative to get the DVD!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Copenhagen-DVD-Region-US-NTSC/dp/B00008RGZG/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1357852509&sr=1-1

[An_Inspector_Calls]

We saw this excellent play at the Theatre Royal Bath, sitting actually on the stage behind the action, very close to the actors, which made it even more compelling. The performing area was a circular piece of stage - like the Earth whose future (or potential lack of future) they were debating. Heisenberg's story is fascinating and I was quite well prepared, having just read a very good book on the subject.

I agree about that biography on Heisenburg, it's excellent. The revelation that, while in (monitored) captivity in Cambridge he hears about the Hiroshima bomb and the very next day gives an accurate, detailed presentation to his fellow captives on how it was made and worked shows that in fact he'd been playing dumb with the Nazis all along! The play doesn't take that slant, but it's still very good - Frayn really does understand the quantum mechanics.

[Mobson7]

Gosh! That was a tour de force! A brilliant radio adaption made even more exciting by a lively and vivid interpretation by first-class actors, Simon Russell Beale, Benedict Cumberbatch and Greta Scacchi ....I saw the play when it premiered at the National Theatre in 1998; I have also seen the film in which Daniel Craig, Stephen Rae and Francesca Anis were exceptional too...it has been shown on BBC several times. The truth is this a great play to get one's teeth into which must be very rewarding for the actors...and the directors; in the case of this radio production Emma Harding whose blog is linked here....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/2013/01/copenhagen---the-directors-blo.shtml

[gurnemanz]

Gosh! That was a tour de force! A brilliant radio adaption made even more exciting by a lively and vivid interpretation by first-class actors, Simon Russell Beale, Benedict Cumberbatch and Greta Scacchi ....I saw the play when it premiered at the National Theatre in 1998; I have also seen the film in which Daniel Craig, Stephen Rae and Francesca Anis were exceptional too...it has been shown on BBC several times. The truth is this a great play to get one's teeth into which must be very rewarding for the actors...and the directors; in the case of this radio production Emma Harding whose blog is linked here....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/20...tors-blo.shtml

I was impressed that the actors really appeared to be grasping the physics they were discussing. The blog linked to above tells us that they had the redoubtable Jim Al-Khalili there at the read-through, so that they could ask him questions as they went along. I will admit that at times I could have used him in my living room. As a radio play it is perhaps easier to try and get your head round on details of the science. It is such a rich play that each time there is always something new to discover or grasp a little bit better .

[An_Inspector_Calls]

That was gripping. Cumberbatch was very impressive as Heisenburg, but I was less convinced by Beale and Scacchi compared to Rea and Annis (in the TV play). But I hadn't realised there were cuts in the TV play; the radio version was so much better for it. The later part, where Heisenburg describes his journey across germany at the end of the war was very moving.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

There's an interesting twist to the story of Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls at Birmingham University arriving at the determination of the critical mass for a U235 bomb (Heisenburg refers to this in the play). That was ~February 1940. Just down the corridor (so to speak), at the same time, a couple of engineers were working on the successful development of the first magnetron - John Randall and Harry Boot. Before 1940 was out, both discoveries had been shared with the US, and the bomb and radar followed. It's difficult to say which was the most momentous discovery. Randall was later the supervisor at King's of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin (DNA - with Watson and Crick).

[gurnemanz]

I had forgotten Oppenheim's "only regret" that they didn't developed the bomb soon enough to use it against Germany.

[french frank]

Gosh! That was a tour de force! A brilliant radio adaption

I didn't know the play but found this a very interesting production - to the extent that I couldn't quite see how it would have worked as a stage play in the first place!

Good performances, especially from Cumberbatch. Most of the time they did sound as if they knew what they were talking about.

[aeolium]

I thought this was marvellous radio: the interplay of ideas and personalities, the complexity of the physical world always set against ethical complexity, the performances of the three protagonists. Greta Scacchi's character seemed almost in the form of a Greek chorus, commenting on the feelings and behaviour of the two main characters. Some of the writing was very dense (to this dense non-scientist), and I think I shall have to relisten.

I haven't seen the film of this but I'm sure I have seen a production on TV quite a few years ago, which was impressive.

[Dphillipson]

. . . In Michael Frayn's now classic play, An_Inspector_Calls, Heisenberg meets Bohr . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_(play)#Historical_debate

The lapsus linguae for the play title seems so spectacular I am surprised no one yet commented. Perhaps no one yet read it.

[gurnemanz]

The lapsus linguae for the play title seems so spectacular I am surprised no one yet commented. Perhaps no one yet read it.

kleines c is addressing his remarks to "An_Inspector_Calls", a contributor to this thread, not naming the play. It's what in Latin lessons we used to call a vocative.

[DracoM]

Copenhagen brilliantly acted and paced. Maybe just a tad breakneck, but given the complexity of the physics, maybe they had to hurry on or linger too long. Gripping Sunday drama from R3.

[french frank]

The lapsus linguae for the play title seems so spectacular I am surprised no one yet commented. Perhaps no one yet read it.

Certainly, I haven't read it. Put me out my misery (København)?

'Welcome back' from your break, DracoM

A gift of a subject for a dramatist, ingeniously put together.