Brad's Reviews > Copenhagen

I don’t know anywhere near enough about Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg nor about physics to judge the biographical or scientific accuracy of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, but I do know ethics and emotion and theatre, and I can say -- without doubt -- that Copenhagen is a stage masterpiece.

I am sad to say that I have never seen it staged, but I have read the play and now listened to an L.A. Theatreworks performance, starring Alfred Molina (Niels Bohr), Shannon Cochran (Margrethe Bohr), and David Krumholtz (Werner Heisenberg), and I have twice been captivated by the brilliance of this piece. Even for the uninitiated (although perhaps it is precisely because I am uninitiated) the science is a mind-blowing delight, and the science leads straight into powerful questions about the atomic age and nuclear arms, and both of these are reflected in and enhanced by the father-mother-son dynamics that underpin the lives of Copenhagen’s three players.

Copenhagen is as poetic as it is emotionally satisfying, as compelling as it is ethically fraught, as of a time and place as it is of an uncertain reality. It is one of the finest plays I’ve read/heard. And damn do I want to play Niels Bohr. What a wonderful part that would be.