‘Copenhagen’, starring Jeff Favorite, left, as Werner Heisenberg, Angel Virgillio, center. as Margrethe Bohr, and Thomas Graves as Neils Bohr, focuses on a conversation between two Nobel Prize winning physicists during WWII. It opens Friday at the Los Alamos Little Theatre’s Performing Arts Center. Photo by Ashley Horner/LALT
Jeff Favorite. Photo by Ashley Horner/LALT
Angel Virgillio. Photo by Ashley Horner/LALT
Thomas Graves. Photo by Ashley Horner/LALT
LALT NEWS RELEASE
In 1941, German physicist Werner Heisenberg met his Danish colleague Niels Bohr in Copenhagen to discuss, in part, the development of the atomic bomb. What else did the two Nobel-Prize winners speak about? Why did the meeting upset Bohr? Why did Heisenberg want to speak with Bohr in Copenhagen in the middle of World War II?
Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen,” opening this week with the Los Alamos Little Theatre, imagines the conversation.
The play runs at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays May 2-17, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 11, at the Performing Arts Center, 1670 Nectar St. Tickets at $20/$16 for students and seniors are available at the door an hour before the show and online now at https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/copenhagen. Doors open 30 minutes before showtime.
A Tony-award-winning play, “Copenhagen” had a few long runs in London theaters before opening on Broadway in 2000. Critical reviews were mixed, one from Physics World praising the play as “brilliant theater” while another from The Daily Telegraph complaining that “I felt that my brain was being stretched to breaking point — well beyond breaking point, in fact.”
Thomas Graves, playing Niels Bohr in the Los Alamos production, admitted “there is much discussion of atomic science in the two acts of the play, which will perhaps be of great interest (or amusement) to those scientists working here in our town.”
“One of the ideas posited early in our play is that there are some questions which have no answers to find. Bohr … and his former assistant, Heisenberg, grapple with those uncertainties and the dilemmas posed by conflicting elements throughout the performance. At times the debates are heated. At times they are light-hearted and even funny.”
For Graves, “the moral and psychological questions are what make this such a remarkable drama.”
Graves said that even today, the question of whether the atomic bomb should have been built and used is “a divisive one. Heisenberg and Bohr are men driven by the need to perform their scientific pursuits to their full conclusions, and yet each is troubled in different ways about what those conclusions might mean for the world. Though we have a small cast, it’s a big play.”
Jeff Favorite, playing Heisenberg, focused on the joy the play will bring to Los Alamos scientists, students, and other local polymaths.
“It will be fun for Los Alamos audiences (including students) to consider the actual human personalities behind the physics that we all study in high school — the Bohr model of the atom, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and Schrodinger’s cat, for example.”
Another layer to the play is the inclusion of Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, played by Angel Virgillio.
“I am honored to portray Margrethe Bohr, who comes across as self-contained and sometimes prickly, but was an integral part of her husband’s work over the years,” Virgillio said. “She is a mother of six, and almost a den mother to the young people who work with her husband over the years. And now she has something to say.”
Margrethe begins as a sounding board and moderator, “but as she becomes more invested in this memory,” Virgillio said, “her own feelings and conscience emerge. Margrethe transitions from being a behind-the-scenes support to being a pillar in her own right.”
Director Emily Stark said that reading the script, she loved what Frayn did with Margrethe, “creating this audience surrogate that both breaks the fourth wall and also brings the boys back to earth from their lofty pontifications. But I could never quite see her in my mind like I could with Heisenberg and Bohr — until Angel Virgillio came to auditions. She has completely tapped into this balance of no-nonsense, protective wife and vulnerable, loving maternal figure. Angel’s performance is simply beautiful.”
Stark was moved by Graves’ and Favorite’s auditions as well.
“Thomas Graves actually gave me chills during auditions when he delivered one of my favorite lines in a cold reading. I never would have thought that I would find myself captivated by a description of fission, but Graves proved me wrong.
“When Jeff Favorite auditioned, it clicked. He was able to tap into the playfulness, with a touch of the chaotic, while holding onto the darkness that Heisenberg carried around with him.”
Stark said she jokes with her cast and production team that Los Alamos audiences “will come for the physics and stay for the psychology.”
But for her, it was reversed.
“I fell in love with how masterfully Frayn captures three very distinct and complex characters well before I understood the physics of it all. Now, two years after living in this town, I have to admit that I find the physics just as compelling. Having educated myself more, I have a much deeper appreciation for the implications of Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s choices that are at the center of this piece. Copenhagen plays with the dissonance of Heisenberg’s position during WWII and brings out the fear, the pride, the confusion, the tension. Both the darkness and the light.”
She added that Copenhagen, essentially a drama about political unrest and moral dilemma, has become “an incredibly important and relevant creation. I hope that I have done the Los Alamos community justice with what is, in my mind, a hauntingly beautiful experience that has had me laughing out loud and crying at nearly every rehearsal. For the physics, for the psychology, for the fear, for the love.”
Crew for “Copenhagen” includes Producer Wendy Caldwell Lanchier, Tech Director Stacy Buck, and Stage Manager Kelsey Denissen. Working the booth are Sarah Robison (lights), Colin Charsley-Groffman (lights), and Stirling Robison (sound). Stagehands, who also perform onstage, include Rian Nguy, Gerard Ducharme, Allison Zastrow, and Kelsey Denissen. The box office is run by Jan and Jas Mercer-Smith, as well as Anna Llobet.
“Copenhagen” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc., www.concordtheatricals.com.