The premise is simple: the Bohrs and Heisenberg meet again in some afterlife realm to confront each other about what exactly happened on that September night – when Nazi Germany was occupying Denmark at the height of the war, putting the old friends on opposite sides. In the end, it works very well – and Darychuk’s direction adds good energy and some interesting visual and aural touches to complement the talkiness. The main focus remains on character and motivation, while much of the science is explained in relatively easy terms. But while this script is challenging, that doesn’t make it incomprehensible to science laypeople. There’s a lot of intense talk about scientific theory in this play – the whole throughline concerns the development of atomic weaponry, while Heisenberg’s famed uncertainty principle plays a strong thematic role. Directed by Katrina Darychuk, this is definitely a play of ideas, with more than two-and-a-half hours of legendary theoretical physicists Bohr (Diego Matamoros) and Heisenberg (Kawa Ada) circling the stage in fierce debate and unreliable recollection – as Bohr’s wife Margrethe (Kyra Harper) brings up points and observations outside their blind spots. These are the questions British playwright Michael Frayn explores in his Tony-winning 1998 three-hander Copenhagen, now running in a Soulpepper Theatre Company production that opened in Toronto on Friday.
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