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It is September 1941. German physicist Werner Heisenberg is visiting his friend and former colleague Niels Bohr at his home in Copenhagen. But this is not an ordinary meeting. Denmark is occupied by the forces of the Third Reich, and Heisenberg is a member of the German scientific team working on the potential applications of nuclear fission. Bohr is half Jewish. Both men are under surveillance by the Gestapo. What is the reason for their meeting at this charged time?

This is the central question of Michael Frayn’s award-winning play Copenhagen. Why Heisenberg visited Bohr in 1941 has remained a mystery ever since, particularly as the accounts given by each of them over the years that followed were vague and divergent. Interest in the import of their meeting is heightened because of what was at stake as Hitler’s armies overran Europe. What were the two men’s respective roles in the development of lethal nuclear weapons? Did they compare notes on the practical possibilities or moral responsibilities? How did Heisenberg reconcile scientific or personal ethics with collaboration with the Nazi regime? And what about Bohr’s prospects as the son of a Jewish mother with the program of mass exportation intensifying? All of these questions, and more, are explored in Michael Frayn’s absorbing play.

Copenhagen premiered at the National Theatre in 1998, winning the Evening Standard Award for Best Play that year. It transferred to the West End in the following year, and opened on Broadway the year after that, also winning the Tony award for Best Play. The play has been revived many times since and is scheduled to be presented again later in January 2021 at the Theatre Royal Bath.
The play has also been made into a BBC television film, the text adapted and directed by Howard Davies, with Daniel Craig, Stephen Rea and Francesca Annis in the cast

I am delighted and honoured to be joined in this episode by the playwright himself.

The Footnotes to our episode on Copenhagen include more on the atomic metaphors that resonate through the play, the drama that played out at Farm Hall country house in 1945, and the darkness of Elsinore.

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