Copenhagen

Rating:
Summary: not good
Review: in an extremely boring account of something that Frayn obviously bulled his way through, readers can actually feel brain cells withering away. there is absolutely nothing in this play worth reading, unless you want to hear endless puns about heisenberg's uncertainty principle. it really doesn't get funnier the more you say it. how this play managed to win a tony, i don't know. all i know is that i use my copy to train my puppy.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Exploration of the Uncertainty of Human Motives
Review: In September, 1941, Werner Heisenberg, then leading Nazi Germany's war-time effort to exploit the uses of nuclear fission, made a trip to Copenhagen to visit his former mentor, the brillant Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Together, in the 1920s, Bohr and Heisenberg had been instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics, complementarity and the uncertainty principle, concepts which provided the theoretical underpinning for modern nuclear physics and, ultimately, the atomic bomb. Hence, the reason for Heisenberg's visit to Bohr, and what Heisenberg and Bohr discussed during that visit, has been the subject of much historical speculation. It is this event which forms the basis for Michael Frayn's thought-provoking play of ideas, "Copenhagen".

Heisenberg's role in Germany's effort to develop atomic weapons has been the topic of much speculation, historians tending to place him on one side or the other of the moral dividing line. There are those who paint him as an evil tool of the Nazis, someone who willingly devoted himself to Germany's scientific efforts to develop an atomic weapon. From their perspective, there has been a tendency to read Heisenberg's 1941 visit to Bohr as an effort to recruit Bohr to the German scientific fold. There are others who see the visit as more enigmatic, who do not ascribe such clear intentions to Heisenberg, and who see in the historical record evidence that Heisenberg was a passive opponent of the Nazis' objectives, a scientist who quietly undermined the German scientific effort while ostenbibly remaining a "good" German.

Frayn brilliantly depicts the uncertainty of Heisenberg's motivations, as well as the uncertainty of what occurred at the meeting between the two scientists, using the theory of these physicists to illumine not the physical world, but the psychological world of human motives. "Uncertainty" thus describes not merely the behavior of the atom, but also the behavior of individuals living in ethically difficult historical circumstances. As Frayn notes in his Postscript to the text of this play, "thoughts and intentions, even one's own-perhaps one's own most of all-remain shifting and elusive. There is not one single thought or intention of any sort that can ever be precisely established."

"Copenhagen" is lucidly and sparely written, a play of dialogue among only three characters-Heisenberg, Bohr and Bohr's wife, Margrethe. There are, of course, numerous references to the esoteric world of theoretical physics, particularly as it developed in the 1920s, and the Postscript to the text is therefore especially helpful in understanding both the scientific and historical frames of reference for the play.

Read this little play-better yet, see it if you can-because "Copenhagen" is a dramatic work that truly deserves to be recognized as one of outstanding plays of recent years.

Rating:
Summary: Read it BEFORE you see the play!
Review: Just saw Copenhagen on Broadway. I found it one of the most interesting evenings I have ever spent at the theater. Three people on the stage for 2.5 hours, discussing physics and personal issues sounds hard to take. Nevertheless, the experience was exhilarating, much like a Stoppard drama.

HOWEVER, the discussion can be difficult to follow at times, not just because of the science, of course, but also because the author covers a lot of the politics of 1920s physics and 1930s Europolitics. After a couple of hours. I wished that I had read the play before seeing it. I recommend that you consider doing the same. (Don't worry: You won't lose any of the "plot" line by reading ahead. In fact, a readahead may make the interchanges seems richer....)

Rating:
Summary: It's really about the Holocaust
Review: Most of the discussion I have seen since Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" premiered has been about whether Werner Heisenberg's visit to Copenhagen to see Nils Bohr, a half Jew, was or was not tied to German plans to build an atomic bomb. Some comment, too, focused on Frayn's methods in reconstructing the wartime visit for what turns out to be a gripping theatrical performance.
But scattered throughout the play is a theme first raised by Bernt Engelmann in "Deutschland Ohne Juden" ("Germany Without Jews"), a book published in 1979. Engelmann belonged to the German resistance and was twice incarcerated by the Gestapo and was, before his death, president of the League of German Authors.
His theme was that the reason Germany lost the war was that it drove out Jews like Einstein, Meitner, and Born, who would have been able to lead the research toward a nuclear bomb.
In the play, Bohr pointedly asks Heisenberg if he should perhaps have asked his wife to sew a nice yellow star on his suit. On many other occasions, Bohr tells Heisenberg that Germany was incapable of solving the problem because all its Jews had been driven out. Bohr even teases Heisenberg about the quantities of Uranium-235 needed to create a chain reaction, a quantity that Heisenberg overestimated greatly.
Over and over, Bohr raises the Jewish issue and is disdainful of Heisenberg's attempt to portray himself as the key to Bohr's own escape to Sweden.
This play, though laden with theoretical physics, is really about the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing concept - but is it drama?
Review: Reading a play poses challenges, as one must imagine it as a production while reading it as a book, and Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" is no exception. Written without stage directions or set descriptions, and relying solely on dialogue, this three-person play describes the complicated relationship between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, two physicists responsible for groundbreaking work in quantum physics. With Bohr's wife Margrethe acting as a fulcrum, the two great physicists discuss their lives before, during, and after World War II, using Heisenberg's visits to Copenhagen as focal points. Probably the most radical device Frayn uses is skipping around in time (appropriate given the mention of Einstein) where the characters speak after they have died as well as in the past, often with one describing to the audience what is happening or what something means while the other two interact; the reader has to be astute enough to "hear" the change in tone to know whether the characters are speaking in the past or as deceased observers, especially since the change can occur from one sentence to the next. This play gathers its power mostly near the end as certain principles of quantum mechanics, particularly the ability of an atomic particle to act like both matter and wave, clarify these relationships. Issues of personal responsibility and negligence ignite the last pages.

But is this drama? Frayn does not create scenes except through expository writing and discussions. Action is described rather than shown, and thematic development is contained solely in the words spoken by the characters. What's worse, the characters seem too aware of the implications of their actions, making the dialogue somewhat heavy-handed. I would expect skilled actors to be able to magnify the glimpses of deep emotion as well as enliven what is already an intriguing concept, but in lesser hands, this play could end up as a mere exercise. The cover perfectly describes the starkness of "Copenhagen": three industrial chairs on an empty stage, two characters talking while another looks on.

Frayn's postscript lends context to the play, and I recommend not skipping it since this is an intellectual play about an intellectual topic. Particularly interesting is Frayn's description of fact, background, interpretation, and pure imagination on his part.

The average play reader should find "Copenhagen" fascinating. The basics of quantum mechanics are rendered in understandable and digestible bits. If you are planning to see a production of "Copenhagen" in the near future, the book is worth purchasing for the postscript; it should enhance your enjoyment of the production.


Rating:
Summary: Art + Physics = Luminescent Fission
Review: The basic story of Copenhagen--and the playwright's leap of imagination to create the conversation of the 3 principles--deserves any accolades that can be awarded: what if, within one fateful day, the leading scientist for the German nuclear development team had received the insight he needed to arm the Nazis? The ramifications are so huge, so mind-boggling, that it's all the more important that Frayn chose to shrink the scale of his dialogue, and make this play as much about the dynamics of how humans understand each other as how we, as a race, could possibly comprehend the worldwide impact of nuclear arms. This is play about the moral ramifications of decisions made within the supposedly "ethnical no-man's-land" of scientific discovery.

Other reviewers have talked about the life history of the scientists, so I'll just sketch out more details about the piece itself. First of all, what an important and revelatory decision Frayn made in including the character of Margrethe, Bohr's wife. In his play, she is the intellectual equal of the physicists, wryly commenting about how many versions of each position paper she spent time typing. Her character makes this play unlike so many science-based dramas before it, because she is a woman and an outsider. Her humor, her humanity and her anger towards Heisenberg's for his involvement with the Nazis...all these issues keep the play grounded in real life, make it palpable to modern audiences not necessarily schooled in the fundamentals of atomic theory. It also insures that the play isn't just the typical strutting, cocksure junk that movies like "Dr Strangelove" aptly mock.

I have a serious criticism of the *publication* of this play though: in order to keep it more streamlined (I imagine), they omitted the stage notes for the characters. This is a shame, and makes the reading of it all the more complicated for those who haven't seen the play in person. Having seen it on Broadway, one of the most striking things was the physicality of how this "talky" play was handled. The stage was set in the round, with a small percentage of audience members overlooking the stage as if at a lecture or a medical examination. The stage was completely circular, and the cast members would often take off in spirals, their bodies acting as electrons around the nucleus (most often Margrethe). They would interact, split off in other directions, speed up their rotations. It was a fascinating reenactment of molecular activity, and the dramaturge or editor who approved this edition should be taken to task for this decision. But don't let this dissuade you from picking up "Copenhagen": it's absolute thought-provoking perfection in every other way.

Rating:
Summary: read the play if you can't go to London to see it
Review: There have been a rush of plays lately on Broadway and in London on math and physics and even a movie: "Proof" which won the Pulitzer price last year, the recently opened "QED" with Alan Alda, the new Russell Crow movie "A Beautiful Mind", and this play "Copenhagen". All this highbrow entertainment deasl with cerebral subjects that lend themselves quite well to drama because of their historical import and our fascinating with the mind of genius.

I did not get to see "Copenhagen" in New York or London so I bought the play's script in Boston. There is an advantage to doing this because the play in book includes a discussion by the author, Michael Frayn, of what is fact and what is fiction and the politics and science around quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principal.

In "Copenhagen" Neils Bohr, the physicist, is living in occupied Denmark and his former protégé Werner Heisenberg is in Berlin working for Hilter's war machine. His actual contribution to Hitler's war effort is the topic of the play and the subject of much historical debate. Did Heisenberg deliberately fudge Hitler's efforts to build the atomic bomb or did he miscalculate how much Uranium 238 was needed to establish the critic mass necessary to sustain the explosion resulting for fission? Did Heisenberg travel to Copenhagen to spy on Bohr and the Americans (assuming Bohr was in contact with them)?

The play is set in both the past and the present. At the beginning we have the ghosts of the departed Heisenberg, Bohr, and Bohr's wife questioning what we all have wondered: why did Heisenberg travel to Denmark to see Bohr and what was discussed? Bohr's wife helps us explore these subjects. She is there to heighten the dramatic tension by question Heisenberg's motives directly and acting as a foil through which the other two characters can debate. She is, however, extremely learned on the technical matter at hand.

I was puzzled about one point in the play and that is the fate of Neils Bohr's children.

Finally, the author broaches but then brushes aside the question of why so many of the great physicists were and are Jews: Bohr, Einstein, Fenyman, and Heisenberg (who he calls a "white jew" whatever that means). Michael Frayn has his character Heisenberg say that Jews dominated theoretical physics. because as Jews chairs in the fields of applied (i.e. as opposed to theoretical) physics were reserved for Gentiles. That would not have been true at Princeton so does not hold up under scrutiny.

Rating:
Summary: The play and a fascinating postscript
Review: This book contains the text of Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning play (94 pages), a fascinating 38-page Postscript, and a two-page word sketch of the scientific and historical background to the play.

The play itself is brilliant (see my review of the PBS production directed by Howard Davies, starring Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig, and Francesca Annis available on DVD) and is the kind of play that can be fully appreciated simply by reading it. There are no stage directions, no mention of props or stage business. There is simply Frayn's extraordinary dialogue. A photo from the cover suggests how the play might be staged on a round table with the three characters, Danish physicist Niels Bohr, his wife Margrethe, and German physicist Werner Heisenberg, going slowly round and round as in an atom. This symbolism is intrinsic to the ideas of the play with Bohr seen as the stolid proton at the center and the younger Heisenberg the flighty electron that "circles." Margrethe who brings both common sense and objectivity to the interactions between the ever circling physicists, might be thought of as a neutron, or perhaps she is the photon that illuminates (and deflects ever so slightly) what it touches.

At the center of the play (and at the center of our understanding of the world through quantum mechanics) is a fundamental uncertainty. While Heisenberg and Bohr demonstrated to the world through the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics that there will always be something we cannot in principle know regardless of how fine our measurements, Frayn's play suggests that there will always be some uncertainty about what went on between the two great architects of QM during Heisenberg's celebrated and fateful visit to the Bohr household in occupied Denmark in 1941. There is uncertainty at the heart of not only our historical tools but at the very heart of human memory (as Frayn explains in the Postscript).

"The great challenge facing the storyteller and the historian alike is to get inside people's heads... Even when all the external evidence has been mastered, the only way into the protagonists' heads is through the imagination. This indeed is the substance of the play." (p. 97)

The three characters appear as ghosts of their former selves, as it were, and begin immediately an attempt to unravel and understand what happened in 1941. The central question is Why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen? Was it an attempt to enlist Bohr in a German atomic bomb project? Was it to get information from Bohr about an Allied project or to pick his brain for ideas on how to make fission work? Or was it, as Margrethe avers, to "show himself off"--the little boy grown up, the man who was once part of a defeated country, now triumphant?

The play leaves it for us to find an answer, because neither history nor the recorded words of the participants give us anything close to certainty. With the conflicting statements of the characters Frayn implies that the truth may be a matter of one's point of view, that is, it may be a question of relativity. Ultimately it may even be that Heisenberg himself did not know why he came to Copenhagen.

Also being asked by Frayn's play is a moral question. Is it right for scientists to build weapons of mass destruction to be used on civilian targets? Heisenberg contends that this is the question he wanted to ask of Bohr. It is ironic that although Heisenberg was condemned by physicists around the world for his (presumed) unsuccessful attempt to build a fission bomb for Hitler, his work killed no one, while the universally beloved and admired Bohr had a hand in the Manhattan project that resulted in the bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities.

As the electron is seen and then not seen, its speed measured and then not measured, but never both at the same time, so it is with Heisenberg's character in life and in this play. We are never sure where he is. Is he working for the Nazis or is he only pretending to? Is he working on a reactor or is he working on a bomb? Did he delay the German project intentionally (as he claimed), or was the failure due to incompetence, or even--as Frayn suggests--to an unconscious quirk of Heisenberg's mind?

In the Postscript Frayn recalls the historical evidence he used in constructing the play and cites his sources and gives us insights into what Bohr and Heisenberg were like. He quotes Max Born, describing Heisenberg as having an "unbelievable quickness and precision of understanding," while "the most characteristic property" of Bohr, as described by George Gamow, "was the slowness of his thinking and comprehension." One can see where Frayn got his metaphor of the atom with its heavy nucleus and its speedy electron. But Bohr was also thoughtful and thorough while Heisenberg was "careless with numbers." And of course these are relative terms since both men were Nobel Prize-winning physicists, brilliant men who reached the very pinnacle of their profession.

Bottom line: one the great plays of our time on an epochal subject, fascinating and cathartic as all great plays should be.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant but tricky piece
Review: This is a brilliant play. I saw it twice in London and wouldn't mind seeing it again. It can be enjoyed eqaully by those who know little or nothing about Quantum Mechanics or its history, and by those who know quite a bit about it -- a remarkable achievement in its own right!

But... The play critically depends on the perfomers and it may be hard to see how good it is without actually seeing it performed -- and performed well! Hence I somewhat hesitate to recommend it to those who haven't already seen it or are about to see it.

Rating:
Summary: emperor's new clothes
Review: this is a typical case of the emperor's new clothes. the subject matter is provocative, the concept seductive... but the execution betrays the writer's complete inability to dramatize material. it's a giant yawn that any truly intelligent person can recognize as a boat missed.