A drama that makes you think deeply isn’t typical summer fare, but Copenhagen is a cool treat from the fledgling Little Grey Hat Productions. It takes you into a world concerned with science and politics and, though about events taking place 1941, it is important to today when many distort values in scientific research and its findings. The dramatized central event is the last meeting between physicists Werner Heisenberg and Neils Bohr in the Danish capital.
Recalled in a life out of this world by the two eminent scientists and Bohr’s wife, the drama pursues the question: Why did Heisenberg come from Germany--at the height of Nazi power--to conquered Denmark to visit Bohr? How did that meeting involve the Americans and British getting and using the atomic bomb? Or did it?
Scenes encompass their earliest meeting in 1924 as eminent physics teacher and brilliant student, the men becoming like father and son, the Bohrs’ family tragedies, arguments concerning science, and each scientist’s chilling escape from killing by the Nazis. They come in episodic form. Times change like attempts to question what happened in the 1941 meeting. All may remind you of Brechtian drama, rarely performed locally.
Did Heisenberg want to get from Bohr information that would help Germany by giving it an eminent place in science or perhaps a victory or else negotiating advantage if defeated? Could the two men together stop all development of an atomic bomb? Was Heisenberg warning Bohr to escape a roundup of Jews? Each of a number of possibilities in a number of episodes ends, appropriately, with uncertainty, like that relevant principle of physics.
The production at Manatee is spare as the accessible language of the interchanges, especially about science. Lighting helps scenes cohere, and there’s one particularly effective moment where Heisenberg walks briefly into both a real and theoretical dark.
The three actors wear black, but Cox has a white blouse with stripes in her skirt, the mixture showing her role as a blend of personal/familial concerns and sifter of the meaning of her observations. David Yamin is smooth and likeable as a secure, brilliant Bohr who is disappointed by Heisenberg both earlier and later. David Yamin conveys Heisenberg’s pride and sense of urgency but makes you understand his feelings enough not to condemn his seeming Nazi alliance. With well-tuned accent, Caroline Cox nicely represents humane points of view. The actors’ unflagging energy and concentration will have you happy to think about what they’re saying. You may find yourself having your own debates about that during intermission as well as after the performance.
