A play on uncertainty

March 21, 2017 12:43 PM

1941: Werner Heisenberg—aging wunderkind, formulator of quantum mechanics, key scientist in Hitler's nuclear program—has traveled to Denmark to seek out Niels Bohr, his old mentor. Why has he come? What can the two have to say to each other? How much of the world can be preserved or destroyed in the course of a ten minute walk?

A radio adaptation of Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn. With Simon Russell Beale as Niels Bohr, Greta Scacchi as Margrethe Bohr, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Werner Heisenberg.

"Historical thoughts on Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen," by Alex Wellerstein:

If Copenhagen errs this is where it errs: it presents, on balance, a case that is remarkably sympathetic to the idea that Heisenberg et al. purposefully sabotaged the German bomb program. This is not what most historians see in the historical record. In its fallback position, the play presents the idea that the German bomb program was a failure on a very basic technical level — that nobody had run the critical mass equation correctly, that nobody had realized a few very basic ideas. And while it is true that there were some errors in the German calculations, they were not nearly so ignorant of these matters as the play would have you believe. They knew what plutonium was. They knew what atomic bombs could be. There were those within the German program (which was not one single program in any case, but several different groups) who knew that the critical mass of enriched uranium would be fairly low (German Army Ordnance thought in 1942 that between 10-100 kg of U-235 would give you a bomb, which is a spot-on estimate). Their problem was not one of basic technical errors. Heisenberg made some technical errors, but he was not the only one on the project.

[...]

So, does this mean that that I don’t like Frayn’s play? No! I actually like the play a lot. It just shouldn’t be anyone’s primary source for information about what happened during the German bomb project. But I don’t think it’s any worse in terms of confusing people than, say, many History Channel documentaries are. Popularizations of history often get things a bit wrong, sometimes a lot wrong — that doesn’t keep me up at night.

The moral questions the play raises, the way it encourages people to view historical record as something complex and evolving, and the way in which it emphasizes that changing the questions you ask of history can lead you to see different aspects of it (in a deliberate analogy to Bohr’s Complementarity), are all quite important and interesting things to think about. I think Frayn’s play manages to get a lot right about what history itself is, and how it is formed on the back of inscriptions and memories and uncertainties and understandings that shift over time. In my mind, those are the really important things to get out of a play.

Previously: Detained German physicists hear about atomic bomb (transcript)

posted by Iridic (12 comments total)

Does Cumberbatch attempt a horrible German accent? At work, can't check.

His normal accent is as beautiful as his cheekbones, but boy does he swing for the fences on other accents.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:15 PM on March 21, 2017

How can Cumberbatch be Heisenberg when he's already Alan Turing? Will we eventually have a movie where BC plays every scientific genius on every side of WWII?
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:19 PM on March 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

How can Cumberbatch be Heisenberg when he's already Alan Turing? Will we eventually have a movie where BC plays every scientific genius on every side of WWII?

I'd pay to see it--can't be worse than most of the crap we get these days.
posted by tzikeh at 1:22 PM on March 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

He actually looks a bit like Oppenheimer.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:23 PM on March 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Other production of it available as a part of LA Theatre Works' Relativity Series (soundcloud), with Alfred Molina, David Krumholtz, and Shannon Cochran. Many other great science-related plays there (including everyone's favourite, Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia').

And if you like the play, Richard Rhodes' 'Making of Atomic Bomb' is an unsurpassable (that a word?) classic.
posted by desultory_banyan at 1:24 PM on March 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

I am a bit under 1/2 through Richard Rhodes' 'Making of Atomic Bomb' and it is a masterpiece. The sheer amount of effort required to harness atomic energy on the behalf of many intelligent minds spread across humanity is staggering.
posted by eschatonizer at 1:33 PM on March 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Thank you so much for this. I saw Copenhagen several years ago, and it instantly became one of my favorite plays of all time. Of course, half the audience walked out at intermission. It's a three hour play about physics. What's not to love?
posted by vibrotronica at 2:12 PM on March 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

I saw the teleplay of the play with Daniel Craig as Heisenberg a long time ago with no warning or idea of what it was. It made quite an impression to watch those ghosts. I get a little choked up thinking about it. While I understand Alex Wellerstein's criticism to me it seems completely irrelevant to the play and the truth of the play. I can't hear Schubert without seeing those actors in my head.

I too am part way through 'Making of the Atomic Bomb' and it is a masterpiece and beautiful in its use of language. Another long time ago I had heard about some bomb book that was supposed to be good and I read 'Dark Sun' by him which is about the hydrogen bomb and I didn't feel anything or really get anything out of it, I don't know if that is just reading at a different time in my life but I am so glad I saw the Atom Bomb book at my library as after the hydrogen bomb I probably wouldn't have searched it out and that would have been a shame.
posted by Pembquist at 2:22 PM on March 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nthing the Rhodes. I read it because of this Ask. Didn't end up making it through American Prometheus.
posted by supercres at 3:10 PM on March 21, 2017

I saw the teleplay of the play with Daniel Craig as Heisenberg a long time ago with no warning or idea of what it was.

I also stumbled into it unawares late one night on PBS. The accidental in media res feeling kept me watching, and when I realized what play it was, I stayed up until its end. Part of that was the history of science geek in me, and part was the realization that this was by the same playwright as one of my favorite plays - Noises Off. I was pleasantly disappointed in my initial curiosity about when it would get funny.
posted by NumberSix at 8:54 PM on March 21, 2017

Oh, neat. I memorized a monologue from this play for an acting class way back in the stone age. I'll have to give this a listen.
posted by brundlefly at 5:04 PM on March 22, 2017

I saw this in Santa Fe many years ago, while Dr. Tully Monster was collaborating at Los Alamos. The circumstances made the film more thought-provoking. As a physicist's wife (not a spouse, but a wife), I identified extremely closely with Margarethe.
posted by tully_monster at 9:52 AM on March 23, 2017