TAG challenges
assumptions of WWII

Could Nazi Germany have beaten the United States in developing the atomic bomb or a radioactive "dirty bomb" during World War II? The Actors Group is exploring that mystery with its Hawaii-premiere production of "Copenhagen," playwright Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning drama about a controversial 1941 conversation between Danish physicist Niels Bohr and his former student and longtime colleague and friend, German physicist Werner Heisenberg. Did Heisenberg ask Bohr to help with the German A-bomb program? Did Bohr persuade Heisenberg to sabotage it?

"Copenhagen": Presented by the Actors Group at the Yellow Brick Studio, 625 Keawe St. Repeats 7:30 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays through April 17. Tickets $10. Call 722-6941.

Unfortunately, for historians and playwrights alike, the conversation took place where the Gestapo couldn't record it. No one knows what was said or why it destroyed their friendship, but TAG director/actor David Schaeffer brings the mystery, the men and the arcane world of theoretical physics to life in what could be the most underrated production of the 2004-05 theater season.

The most remarkable thing about the show is that even though it runs almost three hours, and everything that needs to be said seems to have been covered by the end of Act 1, it never seems to drag. Act 2 is as interesting as Act 1 and adds important issues to the question of what Heisenberg did or didn't do during World War II.

The prospect of listening to the ghosts of Bohr, Heisenberg and Bohr's wife going over all that ancient history might sound as exciting as watching paint dry, but "Copenhagen" turns out to be the same type of engaging introduction to theoretical physics that "Wit" was for Elizabethan sonnets and "Proof" provided for advanced mathematics. The history, the cultural milieu, the theories and the actors' performances mesh perfectly.

Schaeffer and Richard MacPherson are beautifully balanced as Bohr and Heisenberg. Frankie Enos completes the cast as Bohr's wife and secretary-assistant.

The history is the easy part. Bohr and Heisenberg met in 1922, respectively, as a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a student. Germany was a defeated nation nearing economic collapse due to the terms of the Versailles Treaty that forced the Germans to assume sole guilt for World War I. Bohr ignored the "stigma" of Heisenberg's nationality and welcomed him to Copenhagen; Heisenberg soon proved himself worthy of being Bohr's protŽgŽ, and the relationship became almost that of father and son.

THINGS WERE much different when Heisenberg returned in 1941. Germany had conquered half of Europe, driven the English off the continent twice and appeared to be only a few weeks away from destroying Stalinist Russia as well. Heisenberg was Germany's top theoretical physicist, the Germans had occupied Denmark and, although Danish King Christian X and his government were still in place, Bohr was in jeopardy because he was half-Jewish and suspected of being in contact with English and American scientists.

Did Heisenberg come back to lord it over his former mentor? Or was he there to ask Bohr's help in weighing his obligations as a scientist in search of knowledge for knowledge's sake, his obligations as a patriotic German and his obligations to humanity? Did Heisenberg eventually figure out the correct formula but deliberately provide bogus equations to deny Hitler the A-bomb? Or was he never close to getting it right?

What we know is that Nazi Germany didn't develop nuclear weapons and that Bohr escaped to England and played a key role in perfecting the bombs that the Americans dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Schaeffer is solid throughout in playing Bohr as being prepared to give Heisenberg credit for the good he did -- and the good he may have done during the war -- but only if his former student's moral sums and equations add up. MacPherson is likewise excellent as a man trying to avoid being labeled as either a traitor or a failure. (Heisenberg remains a subject of heated controversy almost 30 years after his death; Frayn is more sympathetic than some historians have been.)

Enos adds the final piece of this excellent production as an intelligent and tart-tongued woman who's ready to challenge either of them if their arguments seem shaky.

"Copenhagen" is the type of serious thought-provoking theater that only TAG seems willing to risk bringing to Honolulu, and with Schaeffer directing, it is one of TAG's best such gambles to date. TAG's "Copenhagen" is certain to entertain intelligent, well-read adults and mature teens as it challenges common American assumptions about science, patriotism and the "good guys" vs. "bad guys" of World War II.