Michael Frayn Archives - The Play Podcast

Michael Frayn

by Douglas Schatz | Mar 2, 2022 | Contributor

Michael Frayn

Michael Frayn is a bestselling and award-winning novelist, journalist, screen writer and playwright. After reading Philosophy at Cambridge, he worked as a reporter and columnist for the Guardian and the Observer newspapers. His eleven novels include Headlong, the story of the discovery of a lost painting by Bruegel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction; Spies, which won the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award; and Skios published in 2012.

His numerous full-length plays include Donkeys’ Years, Clouds, Balmoral, Benefactors, Democracy, Afterlife, and of course arguably the funniest farce ever written, Noises Off. His collection of playlets, Matchbox Theatre was published in 2014, and performed at the Hampstead Theatre in 2015. He is also renowned for his masterly translations of Chekhov, having learned Russian while doing his National Service. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Clockwise, starring John Cleese.

Photo by Jillian Edelstein

Podcast Episode(s)

018 - Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn

Recommended Play(s)

Michael recommended Art by Yasmina Reza.

018 – Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn

by Douglas Schatz | Jan 7, 2021 | Podcast Episodes

018 – Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn

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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.

Michael Frayn

Recommended Play

Michael recommended Art by Yasmina Reza.

Photo: Jillian Edelstein

We have footnotes for this episode …

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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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.