COPENHAGEN, ACTOR'S SUMMIT, NEIL THACKABERRY, Director, Scene Design; Maryjo Alexander Costumes

...even in the second week of January, it's a snap to predict that it will be one of the year's best.

I remember thinking to myself as I walked up the aisle after seeing this one on Broadway with my son, "Wow, what a monster that one would be to memorize...but what a great play!" My son Jamin, then a newly minted high school graduate, had said to me as we rose to leave the theatre, "That's the sort of play, I'd like to do someday." Little did I suspect then that the opportunity to play Heisenberg would present itself barely four years later. And what a joy to get to play a serious part wtih not a hint of the clown I am so often called on to display these days.

Neil (surely one of the brainiest and gifted actor/directors on the planet) chose to stage this one in the round and devised a set that strongly suggested the structure of an atom and every so subtly managed to create blocking that mimicked the movement of sub-atomic particles, a touch that was probably lost on the vast majority of the audience, but which tickled my own esoteric leanings.

Heisenberg proved to be an emotional and challenging role on many grounds. I remember that on Broadway Philip Bosco had so dominated the proceedings that I had regarded the piece as being Bohr's, but as we worked on the piece, I came to realize the real ethical conundrum was Heisenberg's. The remarkable speech recounting the desstruction of Dresden was intensely affecting on a human level. One came to realize what his (apparent) foot-dragging has cost him. It was in that place in the season where the company does one for themselves and turned into the surpise hit, drawing packed houses including lots of scientists and students who would never have considered setting foot in a theatre for a different play. The critical reception was enthusiastic:

REVIEWS:

Actors meet challenges of complex 'Copenhagen'
01/14/04, Linda Eisenstein, Special to The Plain Dealer
On a bare stage, two men and a woman warily circle each other and occasionally collide like atomic particles. Michael Frayn's remarkable drama "Copenhagen" is a bracing exploration of history, physics, ethics, politics, friendship and the elusive meaning of memory.

It's a formidable play: complex, deep, with a torrent of difficult material to be mastered. So it's a pleasure to report that Actors' Summit is entirely up to the challenge. The theater's excellent production, with fine direction and memorable performances, is of such a caliber that even in the second week of January, it's a snap to predict that it will be one of the year's best.

"Copenhagen" explores an enigmatic meeting that took place between two theoretical physicists on opposite sides of World War II. In 1941, Werner Heisenberg returns to the Danish home of his former teacher and mentor, Niels Bohr. It's a highly charged visit. Denmark has been occupied by the Nazis, Bohr is half-Jewish, Heisenberg is working for the Germans, and both men are being watched. "I carry around my surveillance like an infectious disease," Heisenberg says.

After some hot sparring that leads to a nostalgic thaw, their meeting suddenly turns icy cold, and ends abruptly. For Heisenberg is now the head of Germany's atomic project, and has asked his mentor two thorny questions: What are the moral implications of a scientist working on weapons of mass destruction? And do you love your country less when it is wrong?

Frayn adds Bohr's wife, Margrethe, to the mix. She's part narrator/observer, part sounding board - the scientists must express themselves so as to be understandable to her (and us). He also sets his play in a chilly afterlife, where the trio can replay the meeting, trying to parse all its meanings.
As Heisenberg, Wayne Turney gives a prodigious performance. Hands nervously wringing behind his back, teasing names from his memory, mind racing, Turney paints a portrait of a brilliant, conflicted man with the desperate need to be understood.

Lucy Bredeson-Smith is a superb Margrethe. Angular and wary, sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, she conveys a stillness that adds emotional weight and counterbalance to the colliding orbits of the more openly volatile men.

Neil Thackaberry gives Bohr a gruff heartiness. He makes you see both the formidable mind and the underlying generosity. His performance is rock-solid, but it's not as deeply nuanced. That may be because he truly excels in his second role: as "Copenhagen's" director.

It's a challenging evening, but ultimately thrilling. And the questions it raises reverberate for days afterwards. If you cherish theater that makes you think as well as feel, don't miss it.

Eisenstein is a playwright in Cleveland.
To reach Linda Eisenstein:
entertainment@plaind.com

FASCINATING, MUST SEE ‘COPENHAGEN’ AT ACTOR’S SUMMIT

Roy Berko (Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--

Lorain County Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News
Times--Olmsted-Fairview Times

Why didn’t Hitler’s Germany develop an atomic bomb and thus get the means to not only win the Second World War, but control the world? That question has plagued many intellects. If Michael Frayn, the author of the much acclaimed and Tony Award winning play ‘COPENHAGEN’ is correct, the answer lies on two planes. First, Hitler’s maniacal hatred of the Jews caused the likes of Einstein and Oppenheimer, the cream of German physicists, to flee the country. In addition, a most significant question,the clue to atomic energy, was never asked nor answered by Werner
Heisenberg, Germany’s wartime head of its nuclear program.

‘COPENHAGEN,’ which came to the stage in 1998, is about the 1941 meeting between Heisenberg and his Danish counterpart Niels Bohr. The probing questions of that meeting are, “Why did it happen?” and “What really took place?” The history of the world may well have been decided at that meeting. Frayn’s play has given fuel to further fire answers to those questions and put to rest the issue of Nazi Germany’s nuclear failure.

A lecture delivered by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada, in March 2001, illuminates the debate. He stated, “The first (and most obvious) interpretative issue the play raises—the relationship between the historical record and a fictional interpretation of historical events based upon a judicious selection of material from that record, some imaginative additions, and a creative patterning of the combination [becomes] what adds up to some significant totality as theatre.”

He further states, “Frayn's work cannot contain or incorporate all the historical material relevant to the events, as well as the various ways this material has been read. His task as an artist is to offer some imaginatively coherent vision of the experience he is addressing. And that task necessarily requires him to select, omit, and invent.”

From the standpoint of the theatre-goer, Frayn accomplishes his task well. Even though the play is
extremely long, and could have been tightened up to make it more palatable to the average attender, it holds one’s attention throughout.

Reviews of the script and its British and American premieres were almost all enthusiastic. As one
reviewer stated, "An evening with Michael Frayn's dazzling new drama will be among the most
exhilarating, challenging and involving two and a half hours you ever spend in a theater. And you don't need an advanced degree to understand the profound questions it raises about motive, morality and the betrayal of memory.”

It is exciting that the play’s local premiere production, on stage at Actors’ Summit, is presented
at the same lofty heights as the original productions. Neil Thackaberry’s directing is exacting. The trio of actors are impeccable in their character developments, and the setting created by having the audience surround the stage results in an intimacy that makes the viewer part of the action.

Wayne Turney is on a theatrical roll. He was recently superb in ‘HAMLET’ and ‘TARTUFFE’ at Great Lakes Theatre Festival. He did a wonderful translation of ‘TARTUFFE’ at Actors’ Summit. He is a dual recipient of the Times Theatre Tributes. He is a sure bet to garner another award for his fascinating performance as Werner Heisenberg. Turney’s performance shows what
happens when acting talent, character understanding, and the right vehicle come together. BRAVO!

A. Neil Thackaberry gives his finest acting performance as Niels Bohr. As is the case with
Turney, he absorbs himself into the character of the half-Jewish Danish physicist who played a major role in helping the United States to develop the atomic bomb.

Last season Lucy Bredeson-Smith gave a career highlight performance as Rosemary in Actors’ Summit’s ‘PICNIC.” Her performance was recognized with a Times Tribute Theatre Award. She has followed up that stellar showing with another fine achievement. She well plays the fulcrum of the teeter totter ride between Bohr and Heisenberg with consummate skill.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: With the complexity of script, any production short of the Actors’ Summit’s superb rendition, would make for a long and confusing evening of theatre. 'COPENHAGEN’ is Actors’ Summit’s very best production to date!!!! This production is not a
should see, it is a MUST see!

By Kerry Clawson
Beacon Journal staff writer

Put two of the most brilliant scientific minds in a room together, and you're bound to get something volatile.

That's what happens in the play Copenhagen, showing in its Northeast Ohio premiere at Actors' Summit in Hudson. The three-character drama explores what could have been said during a mysterious, real 1941 visit between German physicist Werner Heisenberg (working on the Nazi atomic-bomb program) and his old mentor Niels Bohr, a half-Jewish scientist living in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, Denmark.

Wayne Turney and Neil Thackaberry are both highly believable as student and mentor, both in their love-hate relationship and in the tempering, profound respect that these colleagues have for each other. In many ways, their lives as physicists resemble a good old fraternity, but when this story takes place, they are on opposite sides of World War II.

Both actors pointedly convey their characters' passion for their science in animated, often heated debates on a nearly bare, round stage that recalls the shape of an atom. This play, written by England's Michael Frayn, has dense dialogue that heavily mines the study of nuclear physics at a critical time in world history.

The play searches for Heisenberg's motive in his risky visit to Bohr: Is he searching for a piece of the good old collaborating days, simply showing off, or trying to manipulate a highly political, dangerous situation? Those questions are never clearly answered. But Lucy Bredeson-Smith, who plays Bohr's blunt wife, Margrethe, offers warmth, humor and wisdom as she holds mirrors up to each man to help them understand themselves.

Questions of motive and ethics kept me curious, but Copenhagen isn't what you'd call highly suspenseful.

Let's face it: This is a brainy play. Glowing reviews of the 2000 Tony Award-winning Broadway production described it as intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. The play won Tonys for best play, best director and best featured actress.

I left the Actors' Summit production more intellectually stimulated than emotionally satisfied. Copenhagen is a very serious work, loaded with scientific jargon and discussion.
That's quite different from the celebrated math play Proof, which followed on the heels of Copenhagen as the 2001 Tony Award winner for best play. Although Proof revolves around math, it's really about family relationships. Copenhagen is more complex, intricate and cerebral in its treatment of science.

Thackaberry and Turney come across as alternately naive, as Thackaberry's Bohr assumes that all the work on nuclear fission already has been done (wrong), and Turney's Heisenberg assumes that scientists could never gain enough critical mass to create an atomic bomb (wrong again).
We learn that Heisenberg races headlong into scientific discoveries and life experiences without thinking, while Bohr approaches everything slowly and methodically.

We want to dislike Turney's Heisenberg because he's working for the Nazis. But Turney's urgency and uncertainty make us sympathize with him.

At the end of the first act, we think all of these scientists' thought processes have been explored, but the play's second act explores more of Heisenberg and Bohr's old academic relationship.
Playwright Frayn's writing is rich in symbolism. Frayn, best known for his farce Noises Off, certainly has explored every nook and cranny of these great minds in an attempt to explain what might have been said at this dangerous, historic meeting. Historians have wondered for years: Did this exchange between scientific geniuses have the power to alter the outcome of World War II?
Just thinking about those implications is frightening.

Copenhagen is more historically enlightening than it is entertaining. But sometimes, that's what theater should be about.