It's Copenhagen! by Michael Frayn -- the play that has mesmerized, fascinated and intrigued audiences around the world is coming to Canada!
October 07, 2002 -
"Finally, the must-see play of the season has arrived.
Copenhagen will leave you feeling extraordinarily stimulated
and moved. If you see one play this year, this should be it."
Gannett Newspapers (review of the Boston production).
Ottawa/Halifax -- Marti Maraden, Artistic Director of the National
Arts Centre English Theatre, and Ron Ulrich, Artistic Director of
Neptune Theatre (Halifax) are absolutely delighted to be working
together to bring Michael Frayn's award-winning, international
smash-hit play Copenhagen to the stages of the NAC and Neptune
Theatre respectively for the first Canadian stock production. The two
Artistic Directors have been wanting to work together for many years
and have been waiting for the right project. "Copenhagen is
the perfect project for us to share. The vividness of the characters,
the calibre of the writing, the depth of the story are a perfect fit
for the voices of our two companies."
This NAC English Theatre/Neptune Theatre co-production will star
Martha Henry as Margrethe Bohr and Jim Mezon as Werner Heisenberg.
Final casting for the role of Niels Bohr has yet to be announced.
Diana Leblanc is the Director for this production. Stratford Designer
Douglas Paraschuk will design the set and costumes for this
production. Copenhagen, will run in Halifax at Neptune
Theatre's Fountain Hall from January 24 to February 9 with
previews on January 22 and 23. The production will run on the NAC
Main Stage from February 20 to March 8, with a preview on February
19.
Marti Maraden says, "Copenhagen is a brilliantly crafted
piece of theatre - one that engages not only heart and soul, but mind
and intellect in the most gripping of ways - This superb play
has attracted the extraordinary talents of Director Diana Leblanc and
actors Martha Henry and Jim Mezon. We are absolutely thrilled to have
been able to work with Neptune Theatre to obtain the rights to this
important play and to bring it to audiences in Ottawa and
Halifax."
Copenhagen is Michael Frayn's brilliant dramatization of an
actual secret meeting that took place at the height of World War II
in Nazi-occupied Denmark, between the Danish scientist Niels Bohr,
and his former student and colleague, the German scientist Werner
Heisenberg. By invoking the ghosts of Bohr, Heisenberg and Bohr's
wife, Margrethe, Frayn invites the audience to participate in a
compelling moral debate: did Heisenberg set up the meeting in order
to spy for the Nazis, or was he trying to assist the Allies by
passing on information about Nazi scientists' progress towards
building a nuclear bomb? Was he there to steal or share?
Since it first opened at the Royal National Theatre in London in
1998, Copenhagen has won several major theatre awards
including the 1998 Evening Standard and 1998 Critics' Circle Awards
for Best Play, and a 2000 Tony Award. The play has earned huge
critical acclaim and has played to enthusiastic audiences. The New
York Times called the play "...[T]he most invigorating
and ingenious play of ideas in many a year. Endlessly fascinating,
filled with a crackling, questing vitality." Newsweek hailed
it as "[A] brilliant, gripping play which deals with just
about the biggest ideas there are. Frayn creates riveting suspense
and makes the discussion of quantum physics seem like revelations of
character;" and The Guardian claimed "[the play] shows
that out of a three-character, one-set play you can create both
intellectually gripping drama and a metaphor for what Lear called
"the mystery of things"... Frayn builds a brilliant play."
Members of the scientific community in Ottawa have expressed their
excitement that this important play will be presented in Ottawa. Dr.
Paul B. Corkum, Program Leader in Femtosecond Science at the Steacie
Institute for Molecular Sciences with the National Research Council
of Canada says, "It is wonderful that Michael Frayn's play,
Copenhagen, is coming to Ottawa. Although the play has
initiated intense international debate on a 50-year old controversy
in the science community, it is not a play only for scientists. The
issues it raises - truth, friendship, patriotism, and morality
- are of universal interest."
Playwright Michael Frayn began his professional writing career as
a journalist for The Manchester Guardian and the Observer. His first
successful effort for the stage Alphabetical Order (1975) won
Frayn an Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year. Frayn is
perhaps best known for his hugely successful play Noises Off!
which was first produced in 1982, winning Frayn another Evening
Standard Award and enjoying a four-year run in London's West End.
Also known for his critically acclaimed translations of Chekhov,
Frayn has published novels and written for film.
