Copenhagen at Rangashankara!!

Well today evening I watched a play called Copenhagen at Ranga-Shankara, which will definitely be one of the best if not the best play I have seen so far. It is a play by Michael Frayn, based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

Frayn's play Copenhagen speculates on what might have transpired during a meeting between Nobel laureates Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen in September 1941, at the height of the German advance into Russia and just three months before America's entry into the war. The power of National Socialist Germany was at its pinnacle, and the Germans had just been made aware, through Swedish sources, of U.S. plans to build an atomic bomb.

The meeting was at Heisenberg's behest. As Germany's leading theoretical physicist and head of the German Uranium Club, the organ that would assess the possible war uses of nuclear energy, he was the man best situated to advise his government on the creation of an atomic bomb. The older Bohr was not only a professional colleague of Heisenberg, but a close personal friend as well. The play ponders the possible reasons for Heisenberg's visit, linking them to the failure of the Germans to develop the bomb.

The action of the play encompasses the initial meeting of the two physicists in Copenhagen in 1941, another encounter in 1947, and finally an imagined meeting that takes place after all three characters have died. Margrethe, Bohr's wife, is present in all scenes as interlocutor and commentator. Even after death they are unable to ascertain with certainty (thus, the uncertainty principle in human life) precisely what was said in Copenhagen in 1941, what was implied, and what was inferred. Did Bohr understand what Heisenberg intended to convey? Did Bohr misinform intentionally or unwittingly, the Western Allies of Germany's wartime plans?

Did Heisenberg ask to meet Bohr in order to confirm the reports concerning an American effort to build an atomic bomb? Did he want Bohr to disassociate himself from the American project? Did he want Bohr to dissuade the West from developing the bomb because he, Heisenberg, intended to discourage Germany from building the bomb? Did he tell Bohr that Germany would build only a reactor, an engine and not a nuclear weapon? Or was he attempting to mislead Bohr about Germany's real intentions?

As portrayed in Copenhagen, Heisenberg again and again expresses his doubts as to whether scientists should cooperate with the state in developing weapons of war. As an individual and a loyal German, Heisenberg was confronted by a moral dilemma. If he chose to thwart Germany's development of the bomb, he might threaten the very existence of his country, since he knew the enemy was building a bomb. And indeed the preponderance of historical evidence suggests that Heisenberg chose to dissuade the German war office from building the bomb by providing spurious and exaggerated estimates of the materials and time required.

Apart from the plot, which itself is very captivating, was amazes me the most was the strength, dilemma and vulnerability of characters at various acts who I had earlier came across only in my physics books some 7-8 years back. There were lots of references to other scientists including Fermi, Schrodinger, Pauli, Einstein etc during the play and it tells a lot about comraderie and interestingly animosity they share between each other due to their opposite and conflicting views on Physics.

At the end it doesn't surprises me at all that this play has got so many accolades all throught the world. It debuted in London in 1998. Within the National Theatre in London, it ran for more than 300 performances and opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on April 11, 2000 and ran for 326 performances.

At last all I can say is I got much more then my money worth watching this play.

Ciao!!