Alex Kingston (Margrethe), Richard Schiff (Bohr), and Damien Molony (Heisenberg) in Copenhagen [Marc Brenner]

COPENHAGEN
Hampstead Theatre
☆☆☆

During the Second World War, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (an excellent Damien Molony), pioneer of atomic theory, the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics, travelled to occupied Copenhagen to visit his former colleague Niels Bohr (Richard Schiff), who was half-Jewish.

Despite their 16-year age difference, the two had become collaborators in the 1920s, working on the structure of the atom and the physics that would make nuclear bombs possible.

But in 1941 Denmark is under German occupation and Bohr’s wife Margrethe (Alex Kingston) questions Heisenberg’s motives; the meeting is dangerous for all three.

Why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen and what he told Bohr are the questions at the heart of Michael Frayn’s award-winning 1998 drama Copenhagen, which circles around whether Heisenberg failed to build a nuclear bomb because he miscalculated or because he chose not to.

The play’s conceit is that the trio, now beyond the grave, look back on that encounter, replaying and reconstructing their conversations in the hope of uncovering the truth.

Frayn explores the fallibility of memory and the uncertainty of ever knowing another’s intentions or motives.

Michael Longhurst’s evocative production unfolds on Joanna Scotcher’s revolving stage, surrounded by water and enhanced by Neil Austin’s lighting.

The repeated scenes begin to pall, the dynamic between the three smoulders rather than burns, and Schiff’s verbal stumbles occasionally slow the pace. But one can’t deny Copenhagen’s continued relevance as one considers another trigger-happy, populist politician with his finger on the nuclear button and grandiose ambitions of his own.

Until May 2
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