This week’s ”Stage” page offers a review of Michael Frayn’s ultra-cerebral and kinda frosty WWII meditation “Copenhagen,” currently receiving a looong but spirited production at Stage West. As the great nuclear physicists Werner Heisenberg and his mentor/confessor Niels Bohr debate intentions and motivations under the terrifying shadow of the atomic bomb, lay audiences may be wondering, “Is there a real historical/scientific basis to all this verbal wizardry, or are Frayn and Stage West just taking me on a ‘fission trip?’” (Ahem).
Here’s an interesting BBC documentary on the Bohr/Heisenberg meeting that “Copenhagen” riffs on. Also, you might want to check out The Coen Brothers’ predictably bleak and comic take on Heisenberg’s much-misunderstood Uncertainty Principle.
