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Photo By Sandy Underwood
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Nils Bohr (Joneal Joplin, left) tries to understand why
fellow physicst Werner Heisenberg (Greg Thornton,
right) visited him in 1941.
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Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati has tackled the enormous challenges set by Michael Frayn's 2000 Tony-winning play, Copenhagen. Score points to producer D. Lynn Meyers and her able staff for ambition, fearlessness and imagination.
The relentless production moves at a blistering pace. It's stunningly vivid to see and hear. Ultimately, however, it doesn't quite convince.
This might be for reasons of casting and interpretation or for problems that are endemic to the incredibly difficult script. Guest director Ed Stern (producing artistic director of the Cincinnati Playhouse) said in a CityBeat interview that it was the densest script he'd ever tackled.
Dense, indeed. And powerful. Essentially plotless, argumentative, circuitously organized and confrontational, both character to character and script to audience, the play is more closely concerned with philosophical and political issues than with character development or dramatic tension. It relies on performer energy and directorial ingenuity for its momentum as it focuses on questions to which there might be no certain answers.
Fact: The work of the 1932 Nobel laureate in physics, Werner Heisenberg (quantum mechanics), and that of the 1922 Nobel laureate in physics, Nils Bohr (structure of the atom), contributed materially to the atomic age that blossomed in fury over Hiroshima.
Heisenberg is German. Bohr is Danish. Should they and a coterie of other physicists have anticipated the deadly application of their theorizing? Should anticipation of such applications cause theoreticians to eschew certain avenues of investigation? Does theoretical work retain its purity, innocence and native value regardless of application or does it accrue guilt? In other words, does the gun kill the victim or does the man kill the victim?
Fact: In 1941, Europe was at war. Denmark was occupied by German troops. The atomic bomb was theoretically possible but, at that point, still experimental. In the fall, shortly before the U.S. entered World War II, Heisenberg called on Bohr at his Copenhagen home. The two physicists had shared a variety of relationships over the years, mentor and student. Colleagues. Rivals for honors and renown. Vigorous if respectful critics of each other's work.
Conjecture: Nobody knows what Bohr and Heisenberg talked about that autumn afternoon or, in fact, why Heisenberg chose to call at all. There are no records. If notes were kept by any participant, they haven't come to light.
In Copenhagen, playwright Frayn (Noises Off) speculates about their conversation, with Bohr's wife acting as foil, listener and occasional conscience. In the process, the script rehearses years of sometimes bitter rivalry and anticipates -- in a splendid combination of light and sound -- the sky full of fury that these giants of physics helped to father.
The script has no present, only past. It's all recollection of events and investigation of their meaning. Which means that, especially in Act 1, there are long stretches of dialogue in which characters recall for each other the things they did and the words they spoke, things and words about which the listening characters shouldn't need to be reminded.
As played, these passages often sound perfunctory and recited, not acted. It's the playwright speaking directly to the audience, but the players don't mask that or, perhaps, were directed not to mask it. Other sections of dialogue are more incantation than conversation. Some of these emerged with more vehemence than conviction.
As Bohr, Joneal Joplin (familiar to Playhouse audiences as Scooge in Christmas Carol and as King Lear), is most guilty of recitation. He rockets through his lines with practiced variety in his inflection but little evidence of involvement. Dale Hodges (brilliant at the Playhouse in Wit) is Mrs. Bohr. Her performance flowers in Act 2, but she does a fair amount of reciting in Act 1. Greg Thornton (excellent at the Playhouse in Someone to Watch Over Me) takes acting honors, though he, too, is periodically just vehement.
Designer Brian c. Mehring has outdone his best. A dazzlingly white, round nucleus-of-an-atom platform is surrounded with a gleaming, metallic circle on which hurtling players become orbiting particles. This atom is surrounded by a curved reflective wall that acts as a distorting funhouse mirror and becomes blinding when the bomb drops.
COPENHAGEN continues at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati through Feb. 9.
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