Bristol Riverside Theatre presents Copenhagen March 11-30, 2008

Bristol Riverside Theatre presents Copenhagen, a drama about the real-life historic meeting between German physicist Werner Heisenberg and Danish physicist Niels Bohr during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. Written by acclaimed playwright Michael Frayn, directed by Edward Payson Call, and starring Barrymore Award winner and internationally renowned Shakespearean actor Douglas Campbell, the production examines the relationship between these two scientists and friends, their nuclear research, and the responsibility of having knowledge that could change the world.

The controversial play was hailed by The New York Times as “The most invigorating and ingenious play of ideas in many a year… a play about friendship, personal loss, patriotism and the gravest of moral responsibilities.” Copenhagen runs at Bristol Riverside Theatre March 11–30, 2008 (Opening Night is March 13). Tickets are $29 – $36 and are available by calling the BRT Box Office at (215) 785-0100 or online at www.BRTstage.org. 

Scrutinizing the balance between scientific discovery and advancement and moral responsibility, Copenhagen is arguably English playwright Michael Frayn’s most talked about, and certainly most awarded play. The play re-opened scholarly debate on the subject of nuclear research, and even prompted the Niels Bohr Archive to release documents pertaining to the question ten years ahead of the estate’s requested schedule.  The original London production won the 1998 Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Theatre awards for Best New Play.  In 2000 the Broadway production earned Frayn the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best Foreign Play and the Tony Award for Best Play. 

Although it is undisputed that Werner Heisenberg and his former mentor and teacher, Niels Bohr, met in 1941, and that they went for a walk so as to be free to speak without Gestapo surveillance, and that they never spoke again after that day, the contents of their conversation will forever be a mystery.  Copenhagen speculates as to the themes of their conversation: Was Heisenberg trying to glean information from Bohr’s wealth of knowledge?  Or was he trying to warn him of the progress the Germans were making?  Was he seeking advice about whether or not to continue to play an active role in the nuclear studies?  Or was he just trying to rekindle an old friendship?

Frayn said of the writing process: “For the first time I was writing fiction about real characters and I felt very inhibited because I knew these people had really lived and been like this and been like that and had really spoken in such a way and there was no way I could recapture that. I mean, I couldn't go to see them, they're dead and although I read everything that I could get my hands on that they'd written, that still didn't recapture the voices in which they spoke.”  To help resolve this, Frayn cast his three characters – Bohr, his wife, Margrethe, and Heisenberg – as spirits, discussing the events of that day in 1941 with perfect hindsight.

Douglas Campbell stars as Niels Bohr in Bristol Riverside Theatre’s production of Copenhagen along with Campbell’s real-life wife, Moira Wylie as Margrethe Norlund Bohr, and Keith Baker as Werner Heisenberg.

Campbell began his life in the theatre in 1942, touring with Dame Sybil Thorndike and Sir Lewis Casson in an Old Vic production of Euripides Medea.  Now a leading actor for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, he is an internationally renowned actor and has played most of the principal roles in the Shakespeare Canon.  Campbell was the recipient of the 2002 Barrymore Award for Leading Actor in a Play for The Dresser at Bristol Riverside Theatre.  A resident of Montreal, the Canadian legend is a member of the Order of Canada and was awarded the prestigious Governor General’s Award for Services to the Arts.

Wylie is a native Bostonian who trained in New York (Uta Hagen) and London (LAMDA) before eventually settling with her husband in Montreal.  She previously appeared at Bristol Riverside Theatre as Simone de Beauvoir in Tête-À-Tête.  Since then, she has directed Macbeth and The Libation Bearers (Aeschylus) in Vancouver, the latter being part of a presentation of all three Oresteia plays, which she put on with Campbell and their son Torquil.  She recently played Nancy in a Nova Scotia production of Frozen.

Baker is a director, composer, conductor, musical director, musician and singer.  As an actor he was nominated 11 times and was twice the recipient of the South Florida Carbonell Award for Best Actor.  Baker’s New York credits include the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, and Off-Broadway productions of An Evening of Noel Coward, The Evangelist, and A Woman of No Importance.  He took over the role of Jeeves in the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn musical By Jeeves at the Goodspeed Opera House and played James Tyrone in A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Hangar Theatre and BRT.

Director Edward Payson Call’s career spans over five decades. He has taught at both Juilliard and Cornell University, and, together with Douglas Campbell, served as an artistic director at the Guthrie Theater. Based in Seattle, Call has directed on Broadway, (The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, Little Black Sheep) Off-Broadway, and regionally at ACT, Intiman Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, and Geva Theatre Center, among many others.  Call is the Founding Artistic Director of Denver Center Theatre, one of the largest and most honored regional theatres in the country.

In 1913, Bohr published his model of the structure of an atom, with the theory that electrons traveled in orbits around the nucleus of the atom, paving the way for him to become a full professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1916, and its director of the new Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1920.  In 1922, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them.”  The Institute became a worldwide focal point for the study of theoretical physics, attracting some of the most brilliant scientific minds to work there.  In the mid-1920s, this included a young German physicist named Werner Heisenberg. The two shared a mentor/protégé relationship and became close friends and collaborators throughout the 1920s and 1930s.  They were instrumental in defining quantum theory and later, both would play pivotal roles in the development of nuclear energy for practical purposes, perhaps including the atomic bomb. 

But tensions arose between the two at the outbreak of World War II.  Germany invaded and was occupying Denmark, and Heisenberg continued to work as one of the heads of the atomic program for the Nazi regime.  Bohr was not only Danish, but was half-Jewish, and therefore had severe restrictions placed upon the type of work he was allowed to do.  Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, acted for years as her husband's assistant, taking dictation and typing drafts of the numerous scientific papers he published during his career.  In fact, she was more than just his assistant; she was also a sounding board for many of his scientific ideas.   After his work with Bohr in the mid 1920s, Heisenberg would be awarded his own Nobel Prize in 1932 “for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen.”

About Bristol Riverside Theatre

Since 1986, BRT has brought consistently acclaimed professional theatre to Bucks County and maintained a long-term commitment to finding and developing new plays. The theatre is the recipient of over 50 Barrymore Award nominations for Excellence in Theatre, given annually by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. In addition to its mainstage productions, the theatre serves as a cultural hub for the community, with such programs as children's theatre, community concerts and exhibitions of local visual arts.

Bristol Riverside Theatre’s 2007-2008 season is sponsored by Verizon, Grand Sponsor of the 21st Season.