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Michael Frayn Copenhagen ACT1 Margret Well why? Bor Are you still thinking about it? Margret Why did he come to Copenhagen? Bor What does it matter now, dear, when the three of us are no longer in this world? Margret Some questions do not disappear for a long time even after those who asked them are no longer alive. These questions hang in the air like ghosts, looking for answers that they did not find during their lifetime. Bor Other questions remain unanswered. Margret Why did he come? What was he trying to tell you? Bor He explained, but later. Margret He explained this over and over again. But each time after his explanations the picture became more and more hazy. Bor Perhaps everything is much simpler if you understand it properly. He just wanted to talk. Margret Should I talk? With the enemy? In the midst of war? Bor Margret, dear, what kind of enemies were we? Margret But it was forty-one! Bor Heisenberg was one of our oldest friends. Margret Heisenberg was German, and we are Danes. Our country was occupied by Germany. Bor Which, of course, put us in a difficult position. Margret That evening you were so angry with Heisenberg - I've never seen you like that with anyone. Bor I don’t argue, but it seemed to me that I remained completely calm. Margret I know when you are beside yourself. Bor Everything was just as difficult for him as it was for us. Margret Then why did he do it? Now it is no longer possible to offend anyone, now it is no longer possible to betray anyone. Bor I doubt he ever truly knew it himself-. Margret And he was not a friend. At least not after the meeting that ended the famous friendship between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Heisenberg Now that we are no longer in this world, the world remembers only two things about me. One of them is the uncertainty principle. The other is my mysterious trip to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in '41. Everyone understands the principle of uncertainty. Or they think they understand. However, no one understands why I went to Copenhagen. I have explained this over and over again. To Bor himself, Margret. To the investigators who interrogated me, to the intelligence people, to journalists and historians. The more I explained, the more vague the uncertainty became. Well, I'm ready to give it another try. Now that we are no longer in this world. Now that you can no longer offend anyone. Now that no one can be betrayed. Margret You know, I never really liked him. I guess now I can tell you about it. Bor No, I liked it. When did he first come here in the 20s? Of course you liked him. On the beach in Tisvilde, where we went with the guys? He was like family to us. Margret But there was something alien about him even then. Bor He was so lively and energetic. Margret Too alive. Too pushy. Bor Such expressive, observant eyes. Margret Too expressive. Too observant. Bor And yet he was an outstanding physicist. I have never changed my mind on this matter. Margret They were all serious scientists. Everyone who came to Copenhagen to work with you. Almost all the great discoverers in the field of atomic theory have visited you here. Bor The more I look back, the more convinced I am that the most outstanding of them all was Heisenberg. Heisenberg Who was Bohr then? He was the first of us all, he was our father. Modern atomic physics began when Bohr realized that quantum theory applies to both matter and energy. It was nine hundred and thirteen. Everything we did later was based on this great insight of his. Bor Just think, the first time he came here to work with me was in 1924... Heisenberg I had just finished my doctorate, and Bohr was the most famous atomic scientist in the world. Bor...and about a year later he created quantum mechanics. Margret She was born as a result of his work with you. Bor Mainly as a result of his work with Max Born and Pascual Jordan in Göttingen. And about a year later he discovered the uncertainty principle. Margret And you derived the principle of complementarity. Bor We proved both together. Heisenberg The best we have done is in large part the result of us working together. Bor Heisenberg usually led the way. Heisenberg And Bohr gave meaning to it all Bor We worked as the owners of our business. Heisenberg As Chairman and Managing Director. Margret Like father and son. Heisenberg It was a family affair. Margret Even though we had our own sons. Bor We continued to work together long after he was no longer my assistant. Heisenberg And after I left Copenhagen in '27 and returned to Germany. And after I received the pulpit and started my own family. Margret Then the Nazis came to power. Bor And it became more and more difficult to cooperate. When the war started, it was simply impossible. Until that day came in 1941. Margret When this collaboration ended forever... Bop Yes. Why did he do this? Heisenberg September '41... For many years this date remained in my memory as October. Bor Memory is a very peculiar calendar. Margret In your imagination, the past becomes the present. Heisenberg September '41, Copenhagen... And here I am getting off the Berlin train with my colleague Karl von Weizsäcker. We are in simple civilian suits and raincoats among all this crowd [of Wehrmacht officers] who arrived with us in gray field uniforms, among all this golden braiding of Navy sailors, among all these well-tailored black SS uniforms. In my bag I have the text of the lecture that I will give. And in my head there is the text of another message that I definitely need to make. My lecture is on the topic of astrophysics. The message in my head is on a more complex topic. Bor For obvious reasons, we cannot go to the lecture. Margret After all, he performs with her at the German Cultural Institute - the center of Nazi propaganda. Bor He cannot fail to understand our situation. Heisenberg Weizsäcker, who was John the Baptist to me, wrote to Bohr to warn him of my arrival. Margret Does he want to see you? Bor I guess that's why he came here. Heisenberg But how can you arrange a meeting with Bohr? Margret He must be trying to tell you something incredibly important. Heisenberg It needs to look natural. It is necessary for the meeting to take place face to face. Margret Are you going to invite him to our home? Bor Apparently that's what he's hoping for. Margret Nils! They occupied our country! Bor They are not him. Margret He is one of them. Heisenberg First there was an official visit to Bohr’s work at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, then a prim lunch in a familiar dining room. Of course, there is no way to talk to Bohr. Bor It was a complete disaster. He made a very bad impression. The occupation of Denmark, yes, is annoying. But the occupation of Poland is completely acceptable. Germany is now certain to win the war. Heisenberg Our tanks are almost at Moscow itself. What can stop us? Perhaps there is only one circumstance. Only one thing. Bor He knows that, of course, he is being watched. We need to remember this. He needs to be careful with his statements. Margret Otherwise, he will not be allowed to travel abroad again. Bor Honey, the Gestapo installed microphones in his house. He told Goudshmit about this when he was in America. The SS took him for interrogation to a basement on Prinz Albrecht Strasse. Margret And then they let him go. Heisenberg I wonder if they can imagine for a second how difficult it was for me to get permission for this trip? Humiliating requests to party officials, shameful attempts to use friendly connections in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Margret What did he look like? Has it changed a lot? Bor A little older. Margret For me he is still a boy. Bor He's almost forty. A middle-aged professor quickly catching up with everyone else. Margret Do you still want to invite him to our place? to the house? Bor Let's rationally, scientifically, weigh all the arguments for and against. First of all, Heisenberg is a friend... Margret First of all, Heisenberg is German. Bor"White Jew" That's what the Nazis called him. He taught the theory of relativity, and they said it was “Jewish physics.” He was not allowed to mention Einstein's name, but he remained faithful to the theory of relativity, despite the most vehement attacks. Margret All real Jews lost their jobs. And he's still teaching. Bor He still teaches the theory of relativity. Margret Still a professor in Leipzig. Bor In Leipzig, yes. But not in Munich. They did not give him a chair in Munich. Margret He could be at Columbia University. Bor Or in Chicago. He was invited to both places. Margret He would not have left Germany. Bor He wants to be there to restore German science when Hitler leaves. He told Goudpshit about this. Margret And if he is being watched, everything will be reported. Who did he see? What did he say? What they told him. Heisenberg Surveillance follows me around like a contagious disease. However, I know for certain that Bohr is also being watched. Margret Yes, you yourself know that you are being watched. Bor Gestapo? Heisenberg Does he understand this himself? Bor I have nothing to hide. Margret Our compatriots are watching, the Danes. You would be committing a terrible betrayal of their trust if you gave them reason to think that you were collaborating with the enemy. Bor It is unlikely that inviting an old friend to dinner can be considered cooperation with the enemy. Margret But this may look like collaborating with the enemy. Bohr Yes, he put us in a difficult position. Margret I will never forgive him. Bor He must have some good reason. He must have some very good reason. Heisenberg This will be an extremely awkward situation. Margret You won't talk about politics? Bor We will not deviate from physics. I guess it's physics he wants to talk to me about. Margret I think you also understand that we are not the only ones who hear what is being said in our house. If you want to talk to him face to face, then it would be better for you to go outside. Bor I don't want to talk to him face to face. Margret You could go for a walk again, just like in the old days. Heisenberg Can I suggest he go for a walk? Bor I think we won't go on any walks. If he wants to say something, let him say it where everyone can hear him. Margret Perhaps he wants to test some new ideas on you. Bor And yet, what could it be? What can we expect from him? Margret Well, no matter what, now your curiosity is piqued. Heisenberg Here I am wandering through the autumn twilight, approaching Bohr's house on Nie-Carlsberg. I must be followed by an invisible shadow. What do I feel? Fear is undoubtedly a slight fear that always grips a person when meeting a teacher, boss or parents. A much worse fear is about what I need to say. About how to express this. How and where to start a conversation. My even worse fear is about what will happen if I fail to do this. Margret Does this have anything to do with the war? Bor Heisenberg - theoretical physicist. I doubt anyone has invented a way to use theoretical physics to kill people. Margret Could this be related to nuclear fission? Bor With division? Why on earth would he want to talk to me about division? Margret Because you're working on it. Bor But Heisenberg is not working on it. Margret Are you sure about this? It looks like the whole world is working on this. And you are a recognized authority in this matter. Bor He has no publications on fission. Margret It was Heisenberg who did all the initial work on nuclear physics. He consulted you then, he consulted you every step of the way. Bor This was back in thirty-two. But division began to be practiced only in the last three years. Margret But if the Germans were developing any new weapons based on nuclear fission... Bor Honey, no one is going to develop fission weapons. Margret But if the Germans had undertaken to develop it, Heisenberg would have had to participate in it. Bor There are good physicists in Germany and besides Germany. Margret There are plenty of good German physicists in America and England. Bor The Jews, of course, left. Heisenberg Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Born... Otto Frisch, Lise Meitner. We were leaders in theoretical physics around the world! Once upon a time. Margret Who else is left in Germany? Bor Sommerfeld, of course. Von Laue. Margret Old people. Bor Wirtz. Harteck. Margret Heisenberg is head and shoulders above them all. Bor Otto Hahn - he's still there. He, by the way, discovered radioactive decay . Margret Gan is a chemist. I believed that Hahn's discovery... Bor...had already been done by Enrico Fermi in Rome four years earlier. Gan simply did not understand that it was a division. Margret Fermi is now in Chicago. Bor His wife is Jewish. Margret So Heisenberg would be in charge of all this work? Bor Margret, there is no work! John Wheeler and I had already done everything in '39. One of the conclusions of our report is that it will not be possible to use radioactive decay to make any weapons in the near future. Margret Why does everyone keep working on it then? Bor Because there is an element of magic in it. You shoot a neutron at the nucleus of a uranium atom, and it splits into two other elements. This is what the alchemists sought to achieve - to transform one element into another. Margret And yet, why does he come? Bor Now your curiosity is piqued. Margret I had a bad feeling. Heisenberg I walk up to Bor's front door on the gravel that crunches familiarly under my feet and pull the familiar bell cord. Fear, yes. And also another feeling that has become painfully familiar over the past year. Awareness of my own importance in half with a helpless feeling of some kind of absurdity, consisting in the fact that out of two billion people on the planet, this unbearable responsibility is entrusted to me.... The heavy door swings open. Bor Heisenberg, dear! Heisenberg Bor, dear! Bor Come in, come in... Margret Well, of course, when they see each other, all their caution disappears. From the ashes the fire of old friendship flares up. I'd rather put an end to all these insidious introductory phrases and pleasantries... Heisenberg I'm very touched that you thought it possible to invite me. Bor We need to try to continue to behave like human beings. Heisenberg I understand how awkward this is. Bor Other than shaking hands the other day over lunch, we had little opportunity to communicate. Heisenberg And I haven't seen Margret since... Bor How I came here four years ago. Margret Nils is right. You look older. Heisenber d Then, in '38, I hoped to see you both at the congress in Warsaw... Bor It seems like you've been having some personal problems. Heisenber Yes, so, one story in Berlin. Margret With the Gestapo? Heisenberg A little misunderstanding. Bor Yes. we heard. I'm very sorry. Heisenberg Happens. Now the issue is resolved. Positively resolved. We were supposed to meet in Zurich... Bor In September thirty-nine. Heisenberg Only now... Margret Unfortunately, this coincided with the beginning of the war. Gsiesenberg This is unfortunate. Bor It's unfortunate for us, no doubt. Margret Much more unfortunate for so many people. Heisenberg Yes, that's true. Bor That's how it is. Heisenberg What else can you say? Margret What more can any of us say under the circumstances? Heisenberg Yes. How are your sons? Margret OK, thank you. How's Elizabeth? Children? Heisenberg Very good. Of course they say hello to you. Margret They dreamed of meeting so much! However, now that this moment has come, they avert their eyes so much that they hardly see each other at all, Heisenberg Can you imagine how much it means to me to be back in Copenhagen. To this house. I spent the last years almost alone. Bor I can imagine. Margret He hardly notices me. Hiding behind my expression of polite interest, I tactfully watch as he struggles to find the words to continue the conversation. Heisenberg Are things going well? Bor Doesn't matter? Margret Certainly. He is forced to ask. He should at least start a conversation somehow. Bor No matter... What can I say? It has not yet reached the point of brutal treatment, as it happened in other places. Racial laws had not yet been enforced. Margret Bye. Bor A few months ago they started expelling communists and other anti-German elements. Heisenberg And you personally?.. Bor They left him alone. Heisenberg I was worried about you. Bor I know. Kind of you. But for now you can sleep soundly in your Leipzig. Margret Silence again. He did his duty. Now he can move the conversation to more pleasant topics. Heisenberg Are you still sailing? Bor Under sail? Margret Bad start. Bor No, I don't swim. Heisenberg What, the Öresund Strait?.. Bor Mined. Heisenberg Well, of course. Margret I hope he won't ask if Nils skied? Heisenberg Did you manage to go skiing? Bor Skiing? In Denmark? Heisenberg In Norway. You've traveled to Norway before. Bor Yes, I went. Heisenberg But Norway is also... well... Bor Is it also occupied? Yes, this even simplifies the matter. I believe we can now go on holiday almost all over Europe. Heisenberg Sorry. That's not what I meant. Bor Perhaps I've become too sensitive. Heisenberg No, of course, I just have to think what I say. Margret He probably almost wanted to find himself in the Gestapo again. Heisenberg Apparently you think that you will never be able to come to Germany again... Margret The guy is an idiot. Bor Dear Heisenberg, it would be a delusion to think that the citizens of a small nation, senselessly and brutally invaded by its more powerful neighbor, do not feel the same feelings of national pride as its invaders, the same love for their country. Margret Nils, we have an agreement. Bor Talk about physics, yes. Margret Not about politics. Bor Sorry. Heisenberg No, no - I just wanted to say that I still have the old ski hut in Bayrischzell. So if somehow... ever... for any reason... Bor Then Margret will have to sew a yellow star on my ski jacket. Heisenberg Yes. Yes. Stupid of me. Margret Silence again. Those first fleeting sparks went out and the ashes cooled completely. And now, of course, I almost feel sorry for him. Here he sits here completely alone among people who hate him, one against the two of us. He looks younger again, like the young man who first came here in 1924. Younger than Christian would be now. Shy and arrogant, eager to be loved. Homesick and happy to finally be out of there. Of course, all this is sad, because Nils loved him, he was like a father to him. Heisenberg Yes... What are you working on now? Bor Above pressure, mostly. Heisenberg I saw a couple of reports in our magazine Bor What are you doing? Heisenberg Different things. Margret Nuclear fission? Heisenberg I'm jealous that you have a cyclotron. Margret Why? Are you also working on nuclear fission? Heisenberg There are more than thirty cyclotrons in the United States. While throughout Germany... Yes... Well, be that as it may, do you still go to your dacha? Bor We still go to Tisvild, yes. Margret In all of Germany, you meant... Bor...there is not a single cyclotron. Heisenberg Tisvild, so beautiful at this time of year. Bor But you didn't come to borrow my cyclotron, did you? Isn't that why you came to Copenhagen? Heisenberg This is not why I came to Copenhagen. Bor Sorry. Bor As I understand it, we must always remember that our words can be heard by a wider circle of people. However, the absence of cyclotrons in Germany is certainly not a military secret. Heisenberg I have no idea what is a secret and what is not. Bor It is also no secret why there are no cyclotrons in Germany. You can't talk about it, but I can. This is because the Nazis systematically undermined theoretical physics. Why? Because the people who worked in this area were mostly Jews. Why were there so many Jews among them? Because theoretical physics, the physics that Einstein, Schrödinger and Pauli, Born and Sommerfeld, you and I did, was always considered in Germany as inferior in comparison with experimental physics, so departments of theoretical physics and teaching positions in these departments were everything, what the Jews could get. Margret Physics, right? Physics. Bor This is physics. Margret These are also politics. Heisenberg They can sometimes be excruciatingly difficult to separate. Bor So you've seen these two reports. I haven’t seen any of your scientific works lately. Heisenberg That's true. Bor This doesn't sound like you. Lots of teaching work? Heisenberg I don't teach. At least for now. Bor Dear Heisenberg, didn’t they push you out of the pulpit in Leipzig? Didn't you come here to tell us about this? Heisenberg No, I'm still part-time in Leipzig. Bor And also half-time? Heisenberg Elsewhere. The problem is too much work, not too little. Bor It's clear. Is this really true? Heisenberg Do you keep in touch with any of our friends in England? With Bourne? With Chadwick? Bor Heisenberg, we are occupied by Germany. Germany is at war with Britain. Heisenberg I thought you still had some contacts. Or with someone in America? We are not at war with America. Margret Bye. Heisenberg Have you heard from Paulie at Princeton? From Goudshmit? From Fermi? Bor What do you want to know? Heisenberg I'm just asking out of curiosity... The other day I was thinking about Robert Oppenheimer. He and I had a great fight in Chicago in '39. Bor Regarding mesons. Heisenberg Is he still working on mesons? Bor I don't know. Margret The only foreign guest who visited us recently was from Germany. Your friend Weizsäcker was here in March. Heisenberg My friend. and your friend too. I hope so. By the way,

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Actors Stars: Oleg Tabakov, Olga Barnet, Boris Plotnikov

Duration: 2 hours 50 minutes with 1 intermission

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Play in two acts

Not intended for a wide audience. This performance will only interest a narrow circle of theatergoers. It talks about personality development and cultural development in the sciences. The performance can be seen on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater. A.P. Chekhov.

The Moscow Art Theater is one of the oldest Russian theaters. Its founder is K.S. himself. Stanislavsky. Over the many years of operation, the theater has managed to create a very strong repertoire, which is constantly replenished with premieres. As a rule, on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater you can see productions based on the works of Russian classics. However, exceptions are also possible.

The play “Copenhagen” was first presented in 2003. The director was Mindaugas Karbauskis. The storyline was based on the play by Michael Frayn. It is important to point out that the cast in the production is quite famous. You will see on stage such actors and actresses as Oleg Tabakov, Boris Plotnikov and Olga Barnet. You can place an order on our website tickets to Copenhagen to the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, choice online or by phone through an operator.

The public watches a private meeting of chemical scientists for two hours. These scientists were directly related to the events of the Second World War. We are talking about Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr.

Tickets to Copenhagen

To order or buy tickets for the play Copenhagen to the Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov, you just need to call us or fill out the order form and place an order, having received your application, our consultants will call you back and advise you with your choice.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I should like to record my gratitude to Professor Balázs L. Gyorffy, Professor of Physics at Bristol University, for his kindness in reading the text of the play and making a number of corrections and suggestions.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Copenhagen was first previewed at the Cottesloe Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London, on May 21, 1998, and opened on May 28, 1998, with the following cast: MARGRETHE Sara Kestelman BOHR David Burke HEISENBERG Matthew Marsh

Directed by Michael Blakemore

Designed by Peter J. Davison

Lighting by Mark Henderson

Sound by Simon Baker

This production moved to the Duchess Theatre, London, where it was presented by Michael Codron and Lee Dean, and opened on February 5, 1999.

It previewed at the Royale Theatre, New York, on March 23, 2000, and opened on April 11, 2000, with the following cast: MARGRETHE Blair Brown BOHR Philip Bosco HEISENBERG Michael Cumpsty

Directed by Michael Blakemore

Designed by Peter J. Davison

Lighting by Mark Henderson and Michael Lincoln

Sound by Tony Meola

Margrethe But why?

Bohr Are you still thinking about it?

Margrethe Why did he come to Copenhagen?

Bohr Does it matter, my love, now we’re all three of us dead and gone?

Margrethe Some questions remain long after their owners have died. Lingering like ghosts. Looking for the answers they never found in life.

Bohr Some questions have no answers to find.

Margrethe Why did he come? What was he trying to tell you?

Bohr He did explain later.

Margrethe He explained over and over again. Each time he explained it became more obscure.

Bohr It was probably very simple, when you come right down to it: he wanted to have a talk.

Margrethe A talk? To the enemy? In the middle of a war?

Bohr Margrethe, my love, we were scarcely the enemy.

Margrethe It was 1941!

Bohr Heisenberg was one of our oldest friends.

Margrethe Heisenberg was German. We were Danes. We were under German occupation.

Bohr It puts us in a difficult position, certainly.

Margrethe I’ve never seen you as angry with anyone as you were with Heisenberg that night.

Bohr Not to disagree, but I believe I remained remarkably calm.

Margrethe I know when you're angry.

Bohr It was as difficult for him as it was for us.

Margrethe So why did he do it? Now no one can be hurt, now no one can be betrayed.

Bohr I doubt if he ever really knew himself.

Margrethe And he wasn’t a friend. Not after that visit. That was the end of the famous friendship between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

Heisenberg Now we’re all dead and gone, yes, and there are only two things the world remembers about me. One is the uncertainty principle, and the other is my mysterious visit to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941. Everyone understands uncertainty. Or thinks he does. No one understands my trip to Copenhagen. Time and time again I’ve explained it. To Bohr himself, and Margrethe. To interrogators and intelligence officers, to journalists and historians. The more I’ve explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become. Well, I shall be happy to make one more attempt. Now we're all dead and gone. Now no one can be hurt, now no one can be betrayed.

Margrethe I never entirely liked him, you know. Perhaps I can say that to you now.

Bohr Yes, you did. When was he first here in the twenties? Of course you did. On the beach at Tisvilde with us and the boys? He was one of the family.

Margrethe Something alien about him, even then.

Bohr So quick and eager.

Margrethe Too quick. Too eager.

Bohr Those bright watchful eyes.

Margrethe Too bright. Too watchful.

Bohr Well, he was a very great physicist. I never changed my mind about that.

Margrethe They were all good, all the people who came to Copenhagen to work with you. You had most of the great pioneers in atomic theory here at one time or another.

Bohr And the more I look back on it, the more I think Heisenberg was the greatest of them all.

Heisenberg So what was Bohr? He was the first of us all, the father of us all. Modern atomic physics began when Bohr realized that quantum theory applied to matter as well as to energy. 1913. Everything we did was based on that great insight of his.

Bohr When you think that he first came here to work with me in 1924 ...

Heisenberg I’d just finished my doctorate, and Bohr was the most famous atomic physicist in the world.

Bohr… and in just over a year he’d invented quantum mechanics.

Margrethe It came out of his work with you.

Bohr Mostly out of what he’d been doing with Max Born and Pascual Jordan at Göttingen. Another year or so and he’d got uncertainty.

Margrethe And you’d done complementarity.

Bohr We discussed them both out together.

Heisenberg We did most of our best work together.

Bohr Heisenberg usually led the way.

Heisenberg Bohr made sense of it all.

Bohr We operated like a business.

Heisenberg Chairman and managing director.

Margrethe Father and son.

Heisenberg A family business.

Margrethe Even though we had sons of our own.

Bohr And we went on working together long after he ceased to be my assistant.

Heisenberg Long after I’d left Copenhagen in 1927 and gone back to Germany. Long after I had a chair and a family of my own.

Margrethe Then the Nazis came to power.…

Bohr And it got more and more difficult. When the war broke out - impossible. Until that day in 1941.

Margrethe When it's finished forever.

Bohr Yes, why did he do it?

Heisenberg September, 1941. For years I had it down in my memory as October.

Margrethe September. The end of September.

Bohr A curious sort of diary memory is.

Heisenberg You open the pages, and all the neat headings and tidy jottings dissolve around you.

Bohr You step through the pages into the months and days themselves.

Margrethe The past becomes the present inside your head.

Heisenberg September, 1941, Copenhagen... And at once - here I am, getting off the night train from Berlin with my colleague Carl von Weizsäcker. Two plain civilian suits and raincoats among all the field-gray Wehrmacht uniforms arriving with us, all the naval gold braid, all the well-tailored black of the SS. In my bag I have the text of the lecture I’m giving. In my head is another communication that has to be delivered. The lecture is on astrophysics. The text inside my head is a more difficult one.

OR THE DECAY OF THE ATOM OF OWN DIGNITY

Michael Frayn "Copenhagen". Moscow Art Theater named after. A.P. Chekhov

N and on stage Niels Bohr - Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov. Margret Bohr, the scientist's wife, is Olga Barnet. Werner Heisenberg, Bohr's once favorite student, is Boris Plotnikov. Frayne, an English playwright and journalist, wrote a three-hour play “for three actors,” almost devoid of action, but oversaturated with shades of meaning in lines and monologues, in 1998.
1941 Denmark is under Nazi occupation. Werner Heisenberg, the leading physicist of the Third Reich, surrounded by a diplomatic retinue and SS surveillance, comes to visit his former teacher in Copenhagen. Their conversation is short. Heisenberg leaves Niels Bohr's house in a hurry. What exactly they were talking about - most likely, the world will never know.
However, there is no doubt: the conversation became the trigger for the most important chain reaction in the history of the twentieth century. Heisenberg's group in Germany failed - or did not have time, or did not want - to complete work on the atomic bomb by 1945. Hitler didn't get his hands on nuclear weapons.
...And, if we do not mention Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, the history of mankind somehow continues its daily course to this day.
Bohr, Margret and Heisenberg - three participants in a respectable dinner in a professor's house above the North Sea on a dead autumn evening, three grains of sand in a two-billion-strong crowd of humanity - ultimately turned out to be three whales on which, after all, the universe then stood...

E If Bohr (a citizen of the occupied country, half Jewish by blood) had joined the “working group” of German nuclear scientists in 1941 (which Heisenberg did not dare to speak to the master directly about, but the unasked question hung in the air), the “Berlin bomb” would have appeared earlier than American. If Bohr had revealed to Heisenberg in conversation what was wrong with his calculations, Heisenberg could have completed the work himself...
So, the planet and its population (with offspring for three generations to come) were saved by Professor Bohr’s code of honor and self-esteem?
Very similar to that. The Moscow Art Theater “Copenhagen” is about this organic self-worth. But a three-hour master class on self-perception and behavior of a decent person... however, no! a decent person in very difficult circumstances is the most interesting and valuable thing in the play.
The stage is dark and almost empty. Only the fiery letters of replicas run across glass electronic displays. (The set designer is Alexander Borovsky.) Margrethe Bohr’s white, angelically simple and extremely respectable dinner service is the only prop. Professor Bohr’s gray, loosely and comfortably knitted jacket and hard snow-white collars are the second “objective accent” of the performance. Everything has considerable significance in the empty world of Copenhagen, like a vacuum flask.
These are the things of decent people. Small, like a coat of arms on a ring, symbols of everything that Bohr is responsible for.
No one here will raise their voice in any situation. Here every replica will be weighed and honed. Fear, self-interest, irritation, vulgarity, reproaches - the entire cunning and petty serpentarium of base motives - are expelled from this living room. (Although fear, sin, vanity, and the Olympic poker of the multi-move game “to place” in the history of world science live in the subtext.)
...Bohr, grinning, says: “I feel rather strange in mathematical terms. I am not one, but half of a couple.” The subtle acting duet of Olga Barnet and Oleg Tabakov is part of the same paradigm. “White is the stripes under the rings,” wrote the Russian poet. Like the whiteness of starched collars, the unblemished shine of gray hair, the self-esteem of the president of the Royal Danish Scientific Society (the academic robe truly replaced the robe of a nobleman), so is this family precision of the interaction between Margret and Bora, the intelligent and unwaveringly faithful service of the heroine Olga Barnet to her “half of the couple” - elementary particles of self-awareness and “manner of living” that saved the world.
The acting duo Barnett and Tabakova constantly give a master class in human norms. Comme il faut - in its literal and basic meaning: comme il faut - as it should be.
And even if they are seriously and for a long time interested in explaining to the Moscow Art Theater audience the postulates of quantum physics, they act as some kind of native speakers.
The language of feelings, gestures, traditions, ceremonial dinners, relationships, which is native to them. And for the most part of society it’s somehow... half-forgotten.
It’s been a long time since anyone said that not speaking this language is a shame.
...I don’t know whether Michael Frayn’s play itself is good (which, however, was awarded both the Moliere Prize and the Tony Award). The sound and diligent writing of a highly civilized man is somewhat anemic. (But it is the inner passion, the subtle mimicry of talent in the interplay of lines that make commonplaces eternal truths.) I don’t know whether “Copenhagen” will become a milestone for director Mindaugas Karbauskis (unlike his “Old World Landowners” on the New Stage of the Moscow Art Theater, a phantasmagoria, for sure hypnotically “guided” onto the audience by the creative will of the 24-year-old director). But I understand, it seems, the internal tasks of this premiere.
...Those played by Oleg Tabakov and Olga Barnet are so similar to the passing, almost gone, breed of Moscow professors of former times, unfamiliar to the “younger half” of the audience. Knowledge gave these people unshakable dignity. And – the scale of personality. They firmly believed that the future was born in their minds. They knew the value of brain biocurrents.
And, in fact, the future of the world is born in someone’s office.
None of them was on the same scale as Niels Bohr, but together they formed a kind of solid tortoise shell on which the world stands.
God knows why they failed to fully convey this personal nobility of the intellectual, this tribal dignity of the class to students and children. What was an axiom for society in the 1960s–1980s has now become in Russia something like Fermat’s theorem, which seems to have no proof.
And not only for outside world, that's the trouble! The bearers of knowledge themselves lose this inner magnificent confidence in their significance.
And therefore they lose the opportunity to convince the world and posterity of it.
“Native speakers” are leaving. The language is shrinking, crooked, grinning (just like Russian), losing its vocabulary and the population of those who can understand it.
A very dangerous process. But this is a long and not entirely theatrical conversation. Nevertheless, the Art Theater made almost the first remark in this conversation in many years. Clear. And sad.
...You're on your way home from the premiere. You remember Moscow houses and families from a long time ago. The legendary phrase of F.G. is spinning in the mind. Ranevskaya:
“I’m so old, old... I still remember decent people - that’s how old I am!”
And the loudspeakers in the metro exult at the very top of the head:
“Congratulations to Muscovites on their anniversary! Exactly ten years ago, a scanword was first published in Russian!”

	Heisenberg (left) and the Hogs met like old friends, but parted like eternal enemies Photo by Mikhail Guterman
	Roman Dolzhansky. . "Copenhagen" at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater ( Kommersant, 02/27/2003). Marina Davydova. . The Moscow Art Theater staged a play about physicists - "Copenhagen" ( Izvestia, 02/27/2003). Alexander Sokolyansky. . The Moscow Art Theater is investigating the affairs of physicists of the Third Reich ( News Time, 02/27/2003). Elena Yampolskaya. . Michael Frayn, Copenhagen. Moscow Art Theater named after. Chekhov. Stage director - Mindaugas Karbauskis, set design by Alexander Borovsky ( New news, 02/28/2003). Grigory Zaslavsky. . Premiere of the play "Copenhagen" on the big stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater ( NG, 02/28/2003). Marina Raikina. . Even in the next world ( MK, 02/28/2003). Arthur Solomonov. . At the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov - premiere again ( Newspaper, 02/28/2003). Oleg Zintsov. . Moscow Art Theater named after. Chekhov produced an unconditionally intelligent play "Copenhagen" ( Vedomosti, 02/28/2003). Marina Zayonts. At the Moscow Art Theater. A. P. Chekhov staged Michael Frayn's play "Copenhagen" ( Results, 03/04/2003). Olga Galakhova. ( Russia, 04.03.2003). Lyubov Lebedina. . The other day, the premiere of the play “Copenhagen” took place at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater ( Labor, 03/04/2003). Elena Dyakova. or Decay of the atom of self-esteem ( Novaya Gazeta, 03/03/2003). Irina Alpatova. . "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater ( Culture, 03/06/2003).

Copenhagen. Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov. Press about the performance

Kommersant, February 27, 2003

Elementary particles

"Copenhagen" at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater

The Chekhov Moscow Art Theater continues to break labor productivity records. The next premiere on the big stage is the play “Copenhagen” by Englishman Michael Frayn. Three roles are played by Oleg Tabakov, Boris Plotnikov and Olga Barnet, and the play was staged by Mindaugas Karbauskis, who first appeared on the big stage. Kommersant columnist ROMAN DOLZHANSKY was convinced that the theater management's focus on the commercial success of big-stage performances could fail, and he was very happy about it.

Those who buy a ticket to Copenhagen will kill two birds with one stone: they will watch good performance and refresh (or finally acquire) basic knowledge in the field of nuclear physics. For three hours with one intermission, they will listen to about atoms, molecules, elementary particles, cyclotrons, uranium isotopes, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Bohr's complementarity principle, the laws of thermonuclear reactions and matrix calculus. For three hours in the empty space of the huge Moscow Art Theater stage, oblong metal boards with electronic ticker tapes will move up and down, and three people, Niels Bohr (Oleg Tabakov), his wife Margret (Olga Barnet) and Werner Heisenberg (Boris Plotnikov), or rather, their animated shadows will jointly reconstruct the details of the mysterious visit of the physicist Heisenberg, who remained in Germany and served the Nazis, to the anti-fascist Bohr in Copenhagen in the fall of 1941. For three hours they will simply reason and remember, but it will turn out to be interesting.

What Bohr and Heisenberg were talking about then remains a mystery of history. Three times the heroes begin to reconstruct events from the very beginning, but never find the only solution, getting confused in versions and catching each other in misunderstandings. After all, the moral aspect of the scientific activity of nuclear physicists has been exacerbated by the outbreak of war. Teacher Bohr and student Heisenberg rattle off the names of their colleagues, scientific terms and all sorts of circumstances of the past, but in fact they go around and around one, the most important topic - the topic of guilt. After all, it is quite possible that in reality everything was not as is commonly believed, but exactly the opposite. That Heisenberg, who worked for Hitler throughout the war, not only deliberately slowed down work on an atomic bomb for the Wehrmacht, but also contributed to Bohr’s escape from Copenhagen, and he, in turn, having taken refuge in America, precisely through his private discovery of a certain device for a bomb, contributed to the death of the Japanese in August 45th.

Michael Frayn does not allow the director and actors to build traditional interactions and relationships: having slightly established them, the author deliberately destroys the end-to-end action - according to the “principle of uncertainty.” It is this principle that underlies the play. "Copenhagen" cannot be considered a detective story, if only because the secret of the meeting remains unsolved. It is, of course, not about nuclear physics, but, so to speak, about the physics of history, which does not provide reliable formulas for the search for a single truth, and about the physics of human memory, which can either excite the conscience or, on the contrary, lull it to sleep. . The artist Alexander Borovsky perfectly conceived these bright running lines as a metaphor for memory - a combination of sudden clarity and inexorable fleetingness. The actors don’t seem to be doing anything special, but the effect of ongoing stage tension is achieved precisely because in their performance they seem to correspond to the technique: they work clearly, in detail, informatively, but without being too fixated on anything. As for Boris Plotnikov in the role of Heisenberg, he seems to have played his best role in recent years.

And what about the vaunted Mindaugas Karbauskis, ask those who are distrustful of the glory of new names and believe that criticism has been promoting them too much lately? Whatever you want, the young director has something to praise for this time too. Firstly, for not inventing anything unnecessary: ​​such conversational plays usually provoke directors, especially those who have reached the big stage for the first time, to all sorts of meaningful nonsense. Mr. Karbauskis wisely protected the audience and actors from them. And the final lines of the play, where the author’s philosophicalness still goes beyond the bounds of decency, was taken out of the actors’ mouths and run across the scoreboard as a running line - for some distance.

Secondly, try to convince Oleg Tabakov that even today he can play a theatrical role perfectly without any “Tabakovism” that is dear to the hearts of millions (including the heart of your observer), with restraint, concentration, without losing the power of his stage presence. charm and not discouraging the intelligent viewer from the box office. Over the past ten years, many directors have tried to convince Mr. Tabakov of the possibilities of such a game, including such authoritarian-authoritative ones as Kama Ginkas and Valery Fokin. But the cunning acting nature of the super actor still prevailed over the direction. In the laboratory of Mindaugas Karbauskis, this theatrical law finally did not work. This is how physics turned out at the Moscow Art Theater.

Izvestia, February 27, 2003

Marina Davydova

Non-obvious probable

The Moscow Art Theater staged a play about physicists - "Copenhagen"

People who are deaf usually love to sing. The play by the English intellectual writer Michael Frayn, which tells the story of the mysterious meeting at the height of the Second World War between the fathers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, will inevitably captivate a reader who had a shaky C grade in physics at school. It's nice to feel on friendly terms with proton. I don’t know what successes Oleg Tabakov (Bohr) and Boris Plotnikov (Heisenberg) have in the exact sciences, but they, and after them the majority of the audience, plunged into the problems of quantum field theory and the proton-neutron structure of the nucleus with the pleasure of true neophytes.

"Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn is a vivid example of the catastrophic gap between an absurd form and a very difficult content. Strictly speaking, Copenhagen is not a play at all. This is rather a script for a scientific and educational television program, into which, for better assimilation of the material, a game element has been introduced. For some reason, my memory immediately comes to mind of Alexander Abramovich Anikst’s old program about Bernard Shaw, in which the English playwright (or rather, Rostislav Plyatt poorly made up as him) helped the Russian scientist comprehend his own work. As a commentator absolutely necessary for such a television program, “Copenhagen” has a third character - Bohr’s wife Margaret (Olga Barnet), but the whole performance does not leave you with the feeling that Sergei Kapitsa is about to appear on stage instead of her (at the premiere he actually sat in left box) or what good Alexander Gordon.

Meanwhile, the content of “Copenhagen” is much more complex than it might seem at first glance. Behind passages about quantum theoretical kinematics and more intelligible reasoning for mere mortals about the moral and ethical problems of scientific research (Nazism, Hiroshima, the atomic bomb, should a scientist be involved in politics?, etc.), another, much more exciting topic suddenly appears in Frain’s play - the relationship between the mysteries of the universe and the mysteries of human existence.

No matter how deeply Bohr and Heisenberg penetrated into the structure of the atom, there still remains a certain irreducible remainder that cannot be described by any formulas and cannot be clothed in any definitions. No matter how much the characters try to answer the question of why Heisenberg came to Bohr in Copenhagen in September 1941 (from the vulgar version of espionage to the sublime version of saving the world), a final answer cannot be found. The causes of human actions are as mysterious and their consequences as unpredictable as the movements of the smallest particles are mysterious and unpredictable. Unraveling them is as difficult as unraveling the Creator's plan - this is the true meaning of Frain's historical and biographical opus. Cosmos is a mystery, microcosm is a mystery, life is a mystery, history is a mystery, and every attempt we make to explain what we see (or what is recorded by instruments) is nothing more than a version. The ending of "Copenhagen" unexpectedly echoes the ending of "Three Sisters": "Why do we live? Why do we suffer? If only we knew... If only we knew...". The latter is not surprising. Michael Frayn is known in Russia primarily as a translator of Chekhov, and this noble activity of his unexpectedly resonated in a play about physicists.

Tabakov was obviously captivated by two possibilities in “Copenhagen”: a) to play a brilliant scientist who argues with equal success about morality and protons (just not to confuse 235 uranium with 238 - we all saw this humanly understandable plea in the eyes of the great artist ), b) stage a modern non-entertaining, terribly intellectual and morally stable play by a Western author on the stage of the country's main theater. It seems to me that the hope of Russian director Mindaugis Karbauskis was captivated by precisely this unexpected, exciting theme of the play that resonates with Chekhov in a complex way. After all, he is one of the few in our theater who seriously thinks about metaphysical (and not just theatrical and moral) problems.

There are no complaints about Karbauskis. He made one of the most cultural performances on the big Moscow Art Theater stage - quiet, not trying to win the audience at any cost, persistently but unobtrusively revealing the main, although not obvious to everyone, theme of "Copenhagen". But the theme is the theme, and the form is the form. If Michael Frayn had written a story or, say, an essay, he would probably have created a most interesting work, but he wrote the play as if he had forgotten that theater, like physics, has its own irrevocable laws. That here, in addition to interesting reasoning, there must inevitably be a plot, conflict, twists and turns, characters, finally. And that the absence of this cannot be made up for by either excellent artists, a talented director, or the delightful - at the same time functional and ironic - scenography by Alexander Borovsky.

After all, neither Boris Plotnikov, who perfectly coped with the bulk of the text, nor Oleg Tabakov, who courageously restrained his acting temperament, has anything to play in “Copenhagen”. Their heroic transformation of dubious dramatic material into a high-quality stage product certainly deserves respect, but it hardly deserves a high rating according to the Hamburg theatrical score (and after all, everyone who made a play should be judged only by the Hamburg score).

As for the box office success of the new Moscow Art Theater premiere and the repertoire policy of the Moscow Art Theater as a whole, Tabakov, perhaps, should be supported here. The Russian audience is very tired of theatrical entertainment. He again wants to perceive theater as a department - both socio-political, and even physical and mathematical. He wants to learn non-obvious things here. He wants to penetrate the secrets of the universe with the help of art. Is it for nothing that Alexander Gordon’s TV programs have such a high rating, whose admirers have long learned the difference between a quantum and a quart, a third and a terza, and how exactly a dragonfly’s eye works?

Vremya Novostei, February 27, 2003

Alexander Sokolyansky

Uncertainty principle

The Moscow Art Theater is investigating the affairs of physicists of the Third Reich

By the beginning of the action, the Moscow Art Theater stage is deserted. Artist Alexander Borovsky, known for his love of laconicism and clear graphics of spatial solutions, hung fifteen narrow electronic boards from tablets - similar to those on which a ticker runs in public places. On these boards there are inscriptions: “The Little Mermaid”, “Glyptothek”, “New Harbour”, etc. In the center - “Copenhagen”: not only the location, but also the name last play Michael Frayn.

We know this playwright mainly as the author of the comedy “Noise Behind the Stage” (1982). In the early 1980s, Frayne proved to be the most popular of English comedians. He was a recognized master of psychological intricacies and subtexts (Frain translated Chekhov's plays into English, and this work taught him a lot). His fame, however, was short-lived: after “Noise Behind the Stage,” a streak of failure began. "Copenhagen" (1998) could be called Frein's revenge, if this play was at all reminiscent of the previous ones. However, it is more like the German “reading dramas” of the 18th century, static and frighteningly verbose. Oddly enough, the heaviness did not in the least hinder the success of the play. One could say that the aging playwright, who previously had to veil his desire for Wittgensteinian speculation (“I know why I do what I do, but I don’t know how I know that I know why I do it,” etc.) .), waited for his time. Interest in “mind games,” no matter how exciting, is ending before our eyes: the most fascinating subject of artistic study is once again becoming not a game, but Job thoughts. Perhaps this is for the best - if, of course, the theater manages to lure the viewer to such bait.

The characters in the play "Copenhagen" - Niels Bohr (Oleg Tabakov), his wife Margret (Olga Barnet) and his former student Werner Heisenberg (Boris Plotnikov) - appear from under the stage, as befits ghosts. They immediately declare their status: “...Today, when the three of us have long been gone from this world...” - and exchange remarks as if all three were playing the World Soul in Kostya Treplev’s play: the words fall like drops in well, significant looks, solemn gestures, etc. The young director Mindaugas Karbauskis, having started the performance at a lento pace, acted very wisely: in the future, the most insignificant acceleration of the play will be perceived by the audience with heartfelt gratitude.

The plot of "Copenhagen" is a reconstruction of the rather mysterious meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in September 1941. Perhaps this meeting was a key episode in the history of atomic weapons: an episode that could explain why the scientists of the Third Reich, led by the young Nobel laureate Heisenberg, never created an atomic bomb.

According to one version, Heisenberg simply reached a dead end and came for advice: let Denmark be occupied by the Germans, let Bohr and his wife hate the Nazis, but old friendship... scientific honesty... the connection between student and teacher... According to another, ambitious the German patriot was cunning, trying to find out how far the enemies of the Third Reich had gone in their research, and did this almost on the direct instructions of Himmler (the mothers of Himmler and Heisenberg, we note, were friends, and this played an important role in the life of the scientist). The third version claims that work on creating nuclear bomb became an ethical problem for Heisenberg that he came to Bohr in search of sympathy and, perhaps, moral justification. Finally, Heisenberg himself later made it clear that this was almost a peace mission: he allegedly hinted to Bohr that his colleagues were sabotaging the Nazi atomic program, and called on physicists working for England and America to do the same.

Michael Frayn goes through these possibilities one after another, crosses them, tests them for strength. As a result, he comes to a paradoxically optimistic conclusion: anything could have happened, but what happened happened. And Heisenberg, and Bohr, and most of all Bohr’s wife, who is not blinded by scientific calculations, somehow know the main thing: the bomb is a mistake. They do not know how they know this, but it is this vague knowledge that controls their actions. If Heisenberg came to find out something, he behaved in such a way that Bohr simply could not tell him anything. If Heisenberg made a bomb for Hitler with all his diligence, he was still a saboteur, inevitably evading productive decisions. And so on.

The success of Copenhagen had an interesting consequence: Niels Bohr's heirs finally decided to publish drafts of the letters that Bohr wrote to Heisenberg after the end of the Second World War. They clarify a lot by making Heisenberg look less than attractive. Frayn's elegant logic collapsed; the play “Copenhagen”, however, did not become any worse or better from this.

The main discovery of the physicist Heisenberg, as many may remember, was the “uncertainty principle.” The main discovery of the playwright Frayne is that the “state of uncertainty” is the most natural of all human states and that it is, in general, salutary. To the question that the wise Margret Bohr asks at the end of the play: “What will remain of this disgraced and humiliated, so beloved world?” - it allows you to answer: something good will remain.

This, by the way, also applies to the fate of the Art Theater. It is unlikely that Oleg Tabakov will be able to explain with certainty why this three-hour, sedentary, dry performance appeared in the Moscow Art Theater repertoire, why it is decorated in dark gray tones, why it is played with such restraint, with such fear of exaggeration and emotional pressure. Tabakov, by his nature, is inclined to play generous and assertive, he likes to seduce the public - and the public really likes it! However, he plays Bohr with deliberate inconspicuousness, and Plotnikov leaves behind the scenes his inspired, habitually exploited “out-of-this-worldness.” In their stage existence, a simple and important sense of seriousness comes first - hackwork, devalued and dying at the universal feast. Olga Barnett has the most difficult time: her role is built by Frayn almost entirely on cliches. I could not call the actress’s efforts not to cheat, not to fall into superficial pathos, unconditionally successful, but I can call them heroic.

Whether "Copenhagen" will be a success with the audience seems to me to be a question of paramount importance. If today's Moscow Art Theater audience is able to enjoy three hours of leisurely reflection (despite the fact that the thinker from Frein, frankly speaking, is not very deep), we can assume that all the talk about the “death of the intelligentsia theater”, about the sad and insignificant situation of bookworms, wise men, etc. - ordinary lies and self-praise and vulgarity. If the theater hall begins to empty, it means that we still have nothing to respond to lies and self-praise.

New news, February 28, 2003

Elena Yampolskaya

Only for the smart ones

Michael Frayn, Copenhagen. Moscow Art Theater named after. Chekhov. Directed by Mindaugas Karbauskis, set design by Alexander Borovsky.

The release of the Moscow Art Theater "Copenhagen" was awaited with trepidation. They said that it would be full Copenhagen... To have three-hour conversations between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg on a big (and very fashionable) stage - conversations and nothing more - is tantamount to creative suicide. By the eighth minute of the performance we are already talking about quantum theory, by the ninth - about quantum mechanics, by the eleventh the audience is coughing wildly, and you sincerely regret that you did not leaf through a couple of textbooks at home in advance. One thing is good: there is no black board on the stage on which Tabakov and Plotnikov could fiercely crumble chalk and then stand in a cloud of powdery pollen, modestly awaiting applause. Not for myself, of course, but for the beauty of ingenious formulas. ..

So, there is no board. There are fifteen electronic scoreboards. They go up and down and serve either as a garden bench, or as a tea table, or as a lectern for Bohr’s mentoring broadcasts. From time to time, the lines flying across the scoreboard do not carry any additional information: here replicas are duplicated, stage directions come to life (“birds are singing,” for example) and for some reason the names of the characters are endlessly reproduced - Bohr, Heisenberg, Margret. Margret is Bor's wife. Together they gave birth to six children. We lost two. Such arithmetic.

Judging by Olga Barnet's performance, Mrs. Bor was a subtle, sincere, charming woman and, as expected, a bit of a bitch. Barnett is strikingly at home in “Copenhagen”; her Margret really seems to be the core, attracting both the calm, balanced Bohr and the nervous, lively Heisenberg. In essence, Margret is a spectator who is constantly present on stage. Two Nobel laureates are forced to adapt their thermonuclear insanity to the capabilities of a very intelligent (you've become more experienced after so many years), but still a normal woman. And to her, as an outside judge, they try to explain their no less confused lives. Although any woman knows much more about life than a man. Even if he is a genius.

How did you do with physics in high school? If brilliant, skip the paragraph below. As usual, try to remember: what were we thinking about under the steady four-eyed gaze of our ugly “physicist”? That's right - not about waves and particles, but how to bend down lower, hide further, skip the test and, God forbid, not grab a couple in the quarter. What kind of science is this... And when Tabakov formulates the principle of thermonuclear reaction in “simple, accessible language” and asks the audience in a businesslike manner: “This is clear, right? Let’s move on...”, he is immediately answered with both laughter and applause. Because the effect is double: it’s funny, and in fact everyone is catching up. At our desks, our fears dulled us, but here we can relax: Oleg Pavlovich will not demand a diary and will not ask us to come with our parents.

Physics is a thing where the main thing is not to be afraid of anything.

For brainy renegades who have been in love with this subject since childhood (well, there are miracles in the world), “Copenhagen” is a gift from heaven. Name day of the heart. For the first time in many years, lyricists paid attention to physicists. Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov himself - personally - wanders around the stage, portraying an electron. Boris Plotnikov himself jumps out with a flashlight in his hands in the role of a photon, a light particle, and begins to chase the electron so that it changes its trajectory... Lyricists joke the way physicists joked in more well-fed times.

And, actually, what is the difference? For a lyricist, everything starts with love. For a physicist - out of love for Einstein. That's the whole difference.

The performance was sponsored (checked for errors) by the Kurchatov Institute, and the employees there were apparently given several tickets to the premiere. For the very intellectual-looking elderly ladies sitting side by side with me were constantly delighted: what great artists, how did they learn such a complex text... Let’s say Tabakov has a small “prompter” in his left ear. And Plotnikov really knows terms and names by heart. This is probably why Plotnikov completely turned into Heisenberg, while Tabakov remained fifty percent Tabakov. In such subtle things as physics and art, the purity of experiment is extremely important...

From the very beginning it is clear that all these neutrons, mesons, cyclotrons and uranium isotopes are for a reason. Where there is nuclear physics, there are weapons, and where there are weapons, there is a moral question. A young physicist living in a big country came to visit a mature physicist living in a small country that the big country had occupied. Heisenberg is simply a German, Bohr is a citizen of Denmark and at the same time a half-breed Jew. It seems that the well-fed do not understand the hungry. Heisenberg is a patriot, for him his homeland means more than the political regime chosen by his homeland. Bohr is a representative of progressive humanity. But Heisenberg is trying to be loyal to the regime so that his latest developments do not fall into the hands of stubborn Nazis. And with the help of Bohr, progressive humanity will soon drop a bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Their relationship, interaction, close spiritual connection - this is the dramatic lever of “Copenhagen”. Bohr discovered the principle of complementarity, Heisenberg - the principle of uncertainty. Both principles worked: two geniuses, young and old, “father” and “son,” sometimes attracting and sometimes repelling, complemented each other for many years, and the main questions of their lives remained open...

Bohr and Heisenberg appear on stage from a hatch, that is, from the underworld. (Margret, of course, too - a wife is obliged to share everything with her beloved, including his sins.) These two, as well as the people whose names constantly flash in the text, gave the world an unprecedentedly dangerous toy. Fact. In fact, punishment. But, firstly, they were simply realizing the gift of God. Secondly, we fought as long as we could. And for every moment when they could not fight, they bitterly repented. Therefore, hell has been replaced by an endless showdown. Almost heavenly bliss because they can talk. Communicate. Share thoughts. There are people whose heads are designed not for caps and control shots, but specifically for brains. And these brains contain the whole universe. Russia has forgotten about such people. Moscow Art Theater reminded. Thanks to the Moscow Art Theater. They talk to us seriously, they don’t take us for fools - thank you again. The intellect, which has long lived in our Fatherland as a poor relative, returned and said from the main stage of the country: hello, it’s me.

According to all primitive calculations today, Copenhagen should have failed, but it survived. Without commercial props, without indulging established tastes, although, to tell the truth, it is possible, it would be possible to shorten it by half an hour... Well, oh well. "Copenhagen" is beautiful, ironic and philosophically deep. This is a wonderful performance. This is great luck. Here you understand a lot about Bohr and Heisenberg - it’s not even necessary to drive a silent, heartfelt moral across the scoreboard in the finale; and it is so clear that one almost chance meeting, one September day in the forty-first year actually decided the issue of our stay on this earth. I decided in a positive way. And that means we have to live. Various troubles happen: not only that your editorial office, but also your country can be occupied. But one day, any occupier gets a historically just kick in the ass. The people over there fought with Hitler, and nothing happened - they survived.

Life is such a thing where the main thing is not to be afraid of anything.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 28, 2003

Grigory Zaslavsky

Laboratory work

Premiere of the play "Copenhagen" on the big stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater

Well, what can I say? This, of course, is not Kartsev and Ilchenko. Although there were some funny moments in the play and they caused laughter, perhaps even more than the jokes themselves suggested. The audience managed to yearn for a live reaction and therefore used each such opportunity with some “plus”, reacting to live things with particular liveliness.

Moments of fun were followed by new lengthy periods of verbose debate, and the hall little by little turned sour again, losing the thread of reasoning, not without difficulty making its way through physical terms, details of the scientific and political discussion, which Niels Bohr conducted for almost three hours on the big stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater (Oleg Tabakov), Werner Heisenberg (Boris Plotnikov) and Bora's wife Margret (Olga Barnet). This is the play “Copenhagen” by the Englishman Michael Frayn (translation by Zoe Andersen, stage version by Alexander Popov).

Three actors simultaneously appear from somewhere below, from under the stage - from the “archive of history”. And they begin to carry on a conversation and argument that began more than half a century ago, and now seems to be endless, and in the end they also - slowly and silently - plunge back, return to their time.

Three actors are on stage all the time. Nothing more, or rather, almost nothing, since on the stage there are rows of monitors with a ticker, the kind they use in theaters for simultaneous translation. In the finale, when the heroes return to the story (and the actors float under the stage), the monitors “finish” the play, interrupted by the actor mid-sentence, “finish” the last words.

Everything here seems to be “against the theater”: the text with long, difficult-to-hear monologues, and the “auxiliary”, “non-artistic” design of Alexander Borovsky, and the modest, seemingly random, rehearsal props. Svetlana Kalinina's costumes are as close as possible to cozy home sweaters. The actors play almost without pressure, in a restrained manner (although perhaps this is exactly what representatives of “strict”, exact science should say, who also know that their every word is being listened to and monitored?).

Here you remember that at first Frein’s play was supposed to be rehearsed by Temur Chkheidze, a master of such “boring” conversational plots (in Tbilisi he recently released another such drama, where Otar Megvinetukhutsesi plays Pilate and the whole performance is a long and complex religious debate). When the play was left without a director, Tabakov invited Fomenko’s student Mindaugas Karbauskis, who managed to earn a good name as a director with performances in the basement on Chaplygina Street and on the new stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater.

Among young experimenters and fans of new drama, Karbauskis is considered a follower of psychological theater. But this was his first time working with folk artists.

Such a conversational play, it seems to me, needed an almost ballet score, that is, a choreographic outline of each phrase, fine plasticity and inlay. The director did not “finish” anything. On the contrary, he is modest in his choice of additional funds. (Or did the actors not trust him too much? In any case, at the premiere, each of them relied more on their own extensive acting experience.)

For what? Why did he come to Copenhagen?

Some issues live longer than we do.

Some questions remain unanswered altogether.

Walking around in a circle once again Having tried to restore all the details of the visit that the German physicist Heisenberg paid to his teacher Niels Bohr in September or October 1941, the heroes return to the beginning. They talk about uranium, about physics, a little, of course, about Jews and a lot about the responsibility of scientists for their scientific discoveries, which are rarely used for peaceful purposes. And who is more guilty (and of what?): Heisenberg, who remained in Germany and, it seems, deluded himself into refusing to participate in the development of the atomic bomb, or Bohr, whose bomb eventually exploded?

Margret (Olga Barnett) is a guide through difficult conversations and difficult memories. Since she doesn't have to talk much about elementary particles, it seems easier for her to play. She plays: simpler, freer, more humane, there is no tension in her that accompanies the communication of scientist-actors, their verbose and difficult disputes. Tabakov lights his pipe without a break, drowning and hiding in the clouds of smoke (by the way, the smoke is the only real “prop”; everything else - the wine with which he treats the guest, and the tea that his wife brings - is imaginary or drawn). It is clear that Tabakov is interested in Bor. And Plotnikov is trying in every possible way to comprehend Heisenberg’s doubts and confusion.

I really want to understand everything that is being said on stage. But it’s impossible to understand everything. And for some time the hall loses the thread of reasoning. Then it comes to life again - when, among physical calculations, behind concepts and “equations”, as in a darkroom, people suddenly appear, weak or, on the contrary, strong in their opposition (or in their understanding of protest). At this moment, they themselves become clearer to each other, their life, their attitude towards themselves, towards each other becomes clearer than when they were just theoretical physicists and political opponents.

Among the undoubted properties of "Copenhagen" is its noble manner (the very concept of the play "for the mind", as well as its implementation). On the eve of the premiere, Oleg Tabakov expressed the hope that the viewer had not yet forgotten how to think, and reminded that the theater was created not only for relaxation and entertainment (which many experiences at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater taught us to do). It seems he was right.

But the actors have not played on this stage with such nobility and dignity for a long time.

In the finale, they suddenly break sharply with scientific calculations and come to simple, very understandable, banal, but no less significant and important and, of course, extremely sentimental human truths. The audience wipes away their tears and forgives the verbosity of the play and the “laconicity” of the direction.

MK, February 28, 2003

Marina Raikina

Physics is studied at the Moscow Art Theater

Even in the next world

Oleg Tabakov had a C-minus in physics at school, but this did not stop him from playing the great physicist Niels Bohr in the last Moscow Art Theater premiere and explaining to a full audience how the splitting of an atom occurs.

The play by Englishman Michael Frayn with the innocent title “Copenhagen” is very dangerous both for the theater and for the public. For almost three hours, three people - Niels Bohr, his wife Margret (Olga Barnet) and Werner Heisenberg (Boris Plotnikov) talk a lot, and all about the incomprehensible. On the one hand, physical science is here as a reason to talk about universal human problems, on the other hand, as specific concepts: quantum mechanics, magnetic fields, cyclotrons, atomic splitting, mu-mesons, pi-mesons, not to mention the principle of uncertainty, complementarity and others - other concepts unknown to the common man.

Only desperate people can take on such material. And yet, this physical story on the Moscow Art Theater stage was solved in a very interesting way, and the young director Migdaugas Karbauskis, together with the acting trio, performed on an equal footing with experimental scientists. By the way, there were plenty of learned people at the premiere: Sergei Kapitsa was sitting in the box, and, presumably, physical terms from the academic stage warmed his soul.

And on the stage, in three rows, 15 electronic displays hang on metal cables, along which lines run: the names of Copenhagen streets, museums, churches (the original solution of the artist Alexander Borovsky). The scoreboards are lowered and raised to different heights, and this is the only dynamics of empty space. Even the soundtrack works only at the beginning and at the end of the performance. The whistling of birds in the garden is indicated by nothing more than a running line: “The birds are singing.” And why be surprised - the developments of nuclear physicists, as history shows, lead to dead zones. However, Niels Bohr and his student, who met in Copenhagen, talk about something else. What adds intrigue to their conversations is the fact that the meeting takes place... in the next world. In the afterlife, Niels Bohr and his wife repeat the same question several times:

So why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen in 1941?

Copenhagen was occupied by the Germans, Bohr was an anti-fascist, his student worked for the Hitler regime. Bohr's house was wiretapped, and Heisenberg was being watched. The situation itself is like a complicated mathematical formula, like the principle of uncertainty, and for this alone it is extremely interesting. As well as the way in which artists who are unaccustomed to such plays cope with it. Some of the viewers will feel sorry for Tabakov and Plotnikov, who had to cram such an abstruse text. Wasted work: an artist’s knowledge of the text is the same norm as a doctor writing a prescription.

The question is different. How is this physical and mathematical puzzle used to, firstly, bring historical clarity - whose guilt was greater in the creation of atomic weapons: Heisenberg, who worked for the fascist regime, or Bohr, who collaborated with the Allies who dropped the bomb on Japan? And secondly, what kind of person is the great scientist Bohr if he did not throw himself into the sea to save his drowning son? The modest share of the personal in the text of the play, according to the author’s plan, is intended to enhance the universal pathos of the play. But this share is too modest, and perhaps that is why the pathos in the finale turns out to be too much.

The style of production and acting can be defined as super-ascetic, which is completely unexpected for such an artist as Oleg Tabakov. His harshness is set off by the emotional confusion of Boris Plotnikov and the elegant irony of Olga Barnet, whose role, by the way, is the most advantageous in comparison with her partners.

Newspaper, February 28, 2003

Arthur Solomonov

Not Copenhagen

At the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov - premiere again. And again the young director Mindaugas Karbauskis was invited. With the participation of Oleg Tabakov, Boris Plotnikov and Olga Barnet, he staged the play “Copenhagen” by the Englishman Michael Frayn.

The characters - Danish physicist Niels Bohr (Oleg Tabakov), his wife Margret (Olga Barnet) and German physicist Werner Heisenberg (Boris Plotnikov) - meet “when they are no longer in the world.” Where they meet is an idle question for a play dedicated to global problems. Let's say in the theater. And everyone together is trying to unravel a difficult problem: why did a German physicist come to a Danish physicist in 1941, when Germany had already occupied Denmark; why did he start talking about the problems of atomic fission, and, accordingly, about atomic weapons. Obvious answers are immediately discarded, and we move deeper. Deep into human psychology, physics, and the mysteries of history. We go so deep that we feel like we can’t get out on our own. But neither the director nor the actors throw a lifeline to the viewer. And this seems to be a principled position.

Oleg Tabakov - Bor - slowly plugs the pipe. Olga Barnet - Margret Bohr - looks at the physicists with sympathy and feminine tenderness. He is worried, Plotnikov - Heisenberg is endlessly proving something. The words are spoken slowly. And the years literally fly by on the spreadsheets: 1937, 1941, 1947... Sometimes the inscription “The birds are singing” appears, and the characters pour non-existent wine into glasses. The birds had already sung for them, and they had already drunk their wine. But the viewer probably has nothing against the singing of birds, wine, the fascination of the theatrical plot and similar joys. And it's cold on stage. Even if these people “are not in this world,” but since a spiritualistic seance has been started...

Who should the viewer be to listen enthusiastically to five-minute monologues about the wave theory? What do I need a certain cyclotron, which Denmark has, and Germany - alas? Will I shed tears over the “magic of atomic fission”? There are two collisions in Michael Frayn's play: “to calculate from natural uranium or from uranium-235” and the only thing that can interest the theater is the relationship between two people, great physicists. But thanks to the abundance of terms, new names, lectures on wave theory, the emphasis moves to collision number one. All the psychological twists and paradoxes of relationships are shown through a leisurely, detailed, self-satisfied lecture. And what is happening on stage moves away, moves away, until it disappears in the smoke of Oleg Tabakov’s pipe.

Let's imagine that another war has begun between African tribes. Old friends, the elders of these tribes met secretly. One of them gave the other, say, a crocodile tail. And we will spend several hours thinking in detail about the meaning of this gift and how it influenced the war between the tribes. Something similar happens at this performance, where again and again we try to decide why Werner Heisenberg came to Niels Bohr. The historical proximity of these events, familiar names, and the fact that everything happens in Europe does not make this story any less abstract than a war between some tribes.

The director of the play, Mindaugas Karbauskis, who is listed as promising, decided not to promise anything this time. And stage a boring (albeit smart), verbose (with timid bursts of humor), dry play exactly as it was written. No surgical intervention. As if he wanted to prove to the Englishman Michael Frayn that he wrote an anti-theatrical text. It was possible to start a carousel of absurdity. It was possible to make the audience roar with laughter at the words about atoms and particles - Tabakov and Plotnikov could have done this with a bang. They didn't want to. They didn’t want to use a different style - editing, changing rhythms, a vinaigrette of episodes. Everything is orderly, noble. And it is not clear to whom it is addressed. Not to Kapitsa, who gave a standing ovation. And the big question is, to whom - the actors or their colleagues whom they played. Or the problems they talked about for several hours.

The theater found itself in a trap from the moment the play was put into the repertoire, and all other decisions - the invitation of a young director, the participation of talented actors - could not save the situation. But it is not by God’s will that this or that play falls on the theater.

Vedomosti, April 28, 2003

Oleg Zintsov

What the dead man said

Moscow Art Theater named after. Chekhov produced an unconditionally intelligent play "Copenhagen". You have to sit on it quietly, listen carefully, don’t sneeze, don’t giggle: it’s a serious thing.

Oleg Tabakov in the role of Nobel laureate Niels Bohr thoughtfully smokes a pipe and reports many interesting details about the cloud chamber, uranium-235, uranium-238, the “complementarity principle” and other important laws and phenomena of quantum physics. Boris Plotnikov, in the role of Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg, enthusiastically adds information about the “uncertainty principle” that is most important for the play. Olga Barnett as Bor's wife Margret pronounces the text, which is most similar to stage directions. The action - if you can call it that, a plot bogged down in tons of meaningful dialogue - takes place in the next world.

Michael Frayn's Copenhagen is probably a very important European drama. In 1998 it was named the best British play of the year, in 1999 it received the Molière Prize in Paris, and in 2000 the Tony Award in New York. Plot: two Nobel laureates - Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg discuss the details of their meeting in 1941. The meeting lasted about five minutes, what Heisenberg said to Bohr and what Bohr answered to Heisenberg is not known exactly, but, according to Frein, this is one of the central events of the 20th century V. The fact is that Heisenberg, a former student of Bohr, led a group of scientists working in Germany to create atomic weapons, and Bohr at the end of the war advised the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

It is not difficult to guess what a considerable burden of ethical problems this almost detective intrigue raises and how useful the “uncertainty principle” is in it, which is considered Heisenberg’s main discovery, and gives Frayn’s play a philosophical overtone; To apply it to history, oh, how tempting, to apply it to the human relationships of the greats is also curious.

The English playwright constructs different versions of the meeting three times. Either Heisenberg came because, out of old friendship, he needed the advice of a teacher (although Bohr, who lived in German-occupied Denmark, could not sympathize with the scientific projects of the Third Reich). Or maybe Heisenberg was trying to find out from Bohr how far the Americans had gone in their research? It is also possible that they were talking about the moral aspect of the problem or even about concluding something like a pact: you slow down your work, we slow down ours, and no bombs.

But Frein likes the option most of all, according to which Heisenberg himself did not know why he came to the teacher, and the conversation, perhaps, did not take place at all: if it is impossible to accurately determine the trajectory of the electron, how can we say anything definite about the actions of other people and even your own? Fascinating topic? Perhaps yes.

Alas, Frayn’s work is more like a lecture than a play - listening to it, you can’t help but imagine the actors memorizing this text with tears in their eyes: the work of Oleg Tabakov, Boris Plotnikov and Olga Barnet deserves deep respect. It seems that “Copenhagen” generally requires some incredible dedication from the actor: there is practically nothing to play in it, but the mind is a ward, at least at first glance. In my opinion, all these arguments, without compromising the meaning, can be shortened by half, or even more, but Michael Frayn, they say, values ​​​​every letter and does not allow notes to be made. It's a pity.

It was assumed that the play would be staged at the Moscow Art Theater by Temur Chkheidze, but something did not work out, and Oleg Tabakov offered the production to Pyotr Fomenko’s student Mindaugas Karbauskis, who had already produced Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Lunch” and “Lice Deya” at Tabakov’s Studio Theatre. Bernhard, and on the small stage of the Moscow Art Theater - Gogol's "Old World Landowners"; by all accounts, successful.

The direction of "Copenhagen" is extremely neat and calm: nothing superfluous, no liberties, physics without any lyrics - discreet, but soundly, I would like to say, in a European way. Above the empty stage hang several black electronic boards, on which the names of famous nuclear physicists, the names of the places in question (Copenhagen, such and such a garden, etc.) are displayed, or individual remarks or remarks (the performance artist - Alexander Borovsky).

The acting is almost as laconic. Considering that the first thing the characters tell the public is that they have died long ago, this restraint of emotions is justified: why bother, really, when eternity lies ahead. However, the problem of depicting eternity on stage is solved differently everywhere and, for example, in one German theater the actors played the entire act of “Copenhagen” naked. But, of course, at the Moscow Art Theater the late Nobel laureates behave much more modestly.

Results, March 4, 2003

Marina Zayonts

Words, words, words...

At the Moscow Art Theater. A. P. Chekhov staged Michael Frayn's play "Copenhagen"

Taking on Frein's play "Copenhagen", the Moscow Art Theater named after. Chekhov was so frightened by his own actions that he immediately began to scare everyone else. In the announcements and oral comments one could hear the same thing: how terribly difficult, only physics, no love, who will watch it. The last question is the most important. It is generally accepted that complex philosophical conversations are not only too tough for the public, but have long been completely out of fun. The public, they say, likes to have fun, period.

But she also likes to be considered one of their own and not taken for a fool. In “Copenhagen,” Oleg Tabakov, a brave fighter for the audience’s right to entertainment, in the role of physicist Niels Bohr, addresses the audience with a short lecture on what happens to an atom during splitting - he looks into the eyes, explains, and at the end asks again: “I see.” , yes?" And the audience, laughing, applauds.

To say that Copenhagen is easy to watch would be an understatement. Frein's play is not so much complex as it is verbose, like all Western European intellectual plays. At the same time, the author, a famous English playwright, journalist and translator of Chekhov’s plays, did not allow a single word to be shortened in his work. It’s easy to get lost in this verbal forest, but the creators of the play showed the will and resisted. Their work may not be as simple as fans of Full House and soap operas would like, but there is no arrogance in it, that's for sure.

Three people who have long been gone from this world - Niels Bohr (Oleg Tabakov), his wife Margaret (Olga Barnet) and another famous physicist, Werner Heisenberg (Boris Plotnikov) - endlessly talk, argue, finding out the truth, quite uncertain. By the way, Heisenberg precisely formulated this important position of physics - the uncertainty principle. The heroes of the play appear from somewhere underground and go there, without clarifying the question that tormented them. Why did Werner Heisenberg, who was working in Germany under the Nazis, come to occupied Copenhagen in September 1941 to meet with Niels Bohr?

There was no substantive conversation. Heisenberg went back to Germany, stayed there until the end of the war, was interned in England, and his name one way or another remained associated with the fascist regime. Suspected of all sins, Heisenberg never began working on the bomb, rather fussily explaining that he was unable to calculate the required formula. And the impeccable and honest Niels Bohr, forced to flee to the United States, participated in the creation of the atomic bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is where the meaning of the whole story lies.

It was staged (directed by Mindaugas Karbauskis), designed (set designer Alexander Borovsky) and played in a rather dry way, but very elegantly and even with humor, quite unexpected in such a complex philosophical discussion. I can’t judge what the public understands there, but they listen attentively - that’s a fact.

Russia, March 4, 2003

Olga Galakhova

Industrial meeting of physicists at the Moscow Art Theater

“Copenhagen” is the name of the play by contemporary English playwright Michael Frayn, which was successfully performed in many European theaters. She reached the Moscow Art Theater named after. A.P. Chekhov.

A young director, a student of Pyotr Fomenko, Mindaugas Karbauskis, already known for such works as “Old World Landowners” (New Stage of the Moscow Art Theater) and “Litsedey” (O. Tabakov Theater), was invited by Oleg Tabakov to stage “Copenhagen” already at big stage.

It would seem that all the components of the premiere at the Moscow Art Theater. A.P. Chekhov should have ensured success: participation in the play of Oleg Tabakov (Niels Bohr), Boris Plotnikov (Werner Heisenberg), Olga Barnet (Margaret Bohr); the play itself is an intellectual detective story, a dispute between two leading physicists about responsibility to humanity for their own discoveries; finally, an up-and-coming director.

However, mysteriously, all these circumstances did not help the performance, which, alas, lost its goal along the way. And the main thing that did not happen was the director’s understanding of the task: in the name of what are Bohr and Heisenberg appearing on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater today? After all, not only and not so much in order to talk about quantum mechanics, wave theory or the structure of the atom. At times, the course of discussions led to the question: did the MHLT become a branch of the Kurchatov Institute?

Deafness to high questions, which, in essence, is the plot of this play by Frayn, turned the performance into a production play. Neither playing with time, nor attempting to comprehend two truths through the means of theater: the “complementarity principle” of the Dane Bohr and the “uncertainty principle” of the German Heisenberg. After all, these are not only the postulates of physicists, but also two symbols of faith. Behind the frightening terminology and difficult-to-reproduce vocabulary lie the beliefs, passions, and destinies of two outstanding people caught in the whirlpool of events in war and post-war Europe.

The very principle of dramatic construction - a meeting from oblivion of two scientists, a desire to argue in the hope that they will finally understand each other, themselves, their time - forces us to replay the same events over and over again.

The excitement of discovering a lost truth drives the course of this play, but, alas, not the performance itself. To put it mildly, counting only on the charm of Oleg Tabakov, who addresses the audience with the words “let’s start from the beginning again,” in order to return to already known events. Although the audience is happy both with the acting performance of their favorite and with the fact that the audience was remembered.

In the play, every return to the starting point - Heisenberg's arrival from Nazi Germany to occupied Denmark, his visit to Bohr's house, their departure for a "walk" in the garden, but in fact an occasion to talk in detail - all this is characteristically interpreted by the playwright, which means every time requires a different directorial decision. The performance froze in a predictable linear sequence, in a dull repetition of the same thing. The director's decision turned out to be significantly simpler than the play proposed by the playwright.

Perhaps only one scene breathed authenticity - the finale. The ticker boards suddenly flew up under the grate, freeing up space for the three heroes of the drama, who accepted the immutability of the frailty of everything, even the ashes that they themselves would become, the ashes into which their children and their children’s children would turn. Bohr will pass the phrase to Heisenberg, Heisenberg to Margaret Bohr, each of them will evaluate the other, relate the time that lasts and the time that flies away. Presented before us from oblivion, they will disappear before our eyes in the end, go into eternity, into the depths of memory. The bottom line is clear. However, it is unclear how this outcome occurred.

Trud, March 4, 2003

Lyubov Lebedina

Niels Bohr has Tabakov's smile

The other day, the premiere of the play “Copenhagen” took place at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater.

Some believe that this performance based on the play by the famous English playwright Michael Frayn, which tells about the relationship between two great physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, has nothing to do with art at all, since the text of the play is somewhat reminiscent of a textbook on quantum mechanics, while others welcome his appearance on the famous stage, since theater should not so much entertain the audience as educate.

Probably the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Because when the actors use physical terms for three hours and it’s noticeable how they strain not to confuse uranium-235 with uranium-238, it’s hard to perceive. And if, God forbid, you miss even one word in the long dialogues of rival scientists, then you will not understand why Bohr managed to create an atomic bomb together with the Americans, but his former friend Heisenberg in Nazi Germany did not. So it takes the audience some time to, as they now say, “get into” the essence of the relationship between the three heroes (including Bohr’s wife) and the business they were involved in.

Unfortunately, not all spectators pass this test and leave the theater during intermission, disgruntled. Those who have more patience and curiosity, in the second act get used to scientific terminology and even try to catch the “buzz” from what Olga Barnet, Oleg Tabakov and Boris Plotnikov are playing on stage. For example, it is very interesting to watch how Tabakov, playing Bor, argues, defends his point of view, holds a long pause, is silent, chuckles, looks slyly and slyly at the impatient Barnet, who plays the role of his faithful wife.

Of course, Tabakov understood that the audience, who bought expensive tickets to the premiere in order to enjoy the actors’ performances, did not really want to understand the problems of quantum field theory and the proton-neutron structure of the nucleus, so they could “vote” with their feet against the performance. Here he took a great risk, just as he risked entrusting the production to the talented but young director Mindaugas Karbauskis, a student of Pyotr Fomenko. But apparently this is Tabakov’s nature - risky, battle-hardened. It was very important for him to prove to himself and others that in the theater, among other things, there is also a game of thought and intellect.

At the beginning of 1941, Heisenberg comes to German-occupied Denmark to talk with Bohr about something very important to him. But the former spiritual closeness between them is no longer there. Now they are on opposite sides of the barricades: Heisenberg is under the patronage of the “Third Reich”, Bohr is under the fascists’ thumb. Conversation fails. It would seem that science has nothing to do with politics and ethics, but it turns out that they are closely intertwined. Evidence of this is the tragedy of Hiroshima.

Therefore, it does not matter whether the audience understands quantum theory, whether Oleg Tabakov and Boris Plotnikov have read the works of Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg or not. What is important is whether we are able to make an effort on ourselves, whether we are able to overcome the usual inertia of consciousness and go to other unknown worlds. At least mentally. Of course, it was difficult for scientists to comprehend the structure of the atom, but the most difficult thing for them was to penetrate the depths of their souls. This is what young Karbauskis staged the play about.

And yet, despite all the “scientific” experiments, the theater remains a theater, with its surprises, incidents, and technical complications. It is unclear where the cat came from, meowing behind the scenes during the first act, according to the theory of probability, could disrupt the performance if... If the actors continued to pretend that they did not hear her, while the audience began to have fun about this. When Oleg Pavlovich, without leaving his character, gently reacted to the cat’s meow, the tension between the actors and the audience instantly subsided. In fact, like no other actor, he knows how to act hypnotically on an audience. Tabakov can stand on stage for several minutes, smile, smoke his pipe with aromatic tobacco, and it will be interesting, no one in the audience will move. Such is the magic of his acting talent. Therefore, no matter how complex the text of his role may be, Tabakov first of all communicates with the viewer on a spiritual level. And this is the main thing. But I just can’t imagine what happened to the unfortunate cat?..

Novaya Gazeta, March 3, 2003

Elena Dyakova

Nine days of one year in 1941,

or the disintegration of the atom of self-esteem

Michael Frayn "Copenhagen". Moscow Art Theater named after. A.P. Chekhov

On stage Niels Bohr - Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov. Margret Bohr, the scientist's wife, is Olga Barnet. Werner Heisenberg, Bohr's once favorite student, is Boris Plotnikov. Frayne, an English playwright and journalist, wrote a three-hour play “for three actors,” almost devoid of action, but oversaturated with shades of meaning in lines and monologues, in 1998.

1941 Denmark is under Nazi occupation. Werner Heisenberg, the leading physicist of the Third Reich, surrounded by a diplomatic retinue and SS surveillance, comes to visit his former teacher in Copenhagen. Their conversation is short. Heisenberg leaves Niels Bohr's house in a hurry. What exactly they were talking about - most likely, the world will never know.

However, there is no doubt: the conversation became the trigger for the most important chain reaction in the history of the twentieth century. Heisenberg's group in Germany failed - or did not have time, or did not want - to complete work on the atomic bomb by 1945. Hitler did not get his hands on nuclear weapons.

And, if we do not mention Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, the history of mankind somehow continues its daily course to this day.

Bohr, Margret and Heisenberg - three participants in a respectable dinner in a professor's house above the North Sea on a dead autumn evening, three grains of sand in a two-billion-strong crowd of humanity - ultimately turned out to be three whales on which, after all, the universe then stood...

If Bohr (a citizen of the occupied country, half Jewish by blood) had joined the “working group” of German nuclear scientists in 1941 (which Heisenberg did not dare to speak to the master directly about, but the unasked question hung in the air), the “Berlin bomb” would have appeared earlier than American. If Bohr had revealed to Heisenberg in conversation what was wrong with his calculations, Heisenberg could have completed the work himself...

So, the planet and its population (with offspring for three generations to come) were saved by Professor Bohr’s code of honor and self-esteem?

Very similar to that. The Moscow Art Theater “Copenhagen” is about this organic self-worth. But a three-hour master class on self-perception and behavior of a decent person... however, no! a decent person in very difficult circumstances is the most interesting and valuable thing in the play.

The stage is dark and almost empty. Only the fiery letters of replicas run across glass electronic displays. (The set designer is Alexander Borovsky.) Margrethe Bohr’s white, angelically simple and extremely respectable dinner service is the only prop. Professor Bohr’s gray, loosely and comfortably knitted jacket and hard snow-white collars are the second “objective accent” of the performance. Everything has considerable significance in the empty world of Copenhagen, like a vacuum flask.

These are the things of decent people. Small, like a coat of arms on a ring, symbols of everything that Bohr is responsible for.

No one here will raise their voice in any situation. Here every replica will be weighed and honed. Fear, self-interest, irritation, vulgarity, reproaches - the entire cunning and petty serpentarium of base motives - are expelled from this living room. (Although fear, sin, vanity, and the Olympic poker of the multi-move game “to place” in the history of world science live in the subtext.)

Bohr, grinning, says: “I feel rather strange in mathematical terms. I am not one, but half of a couple.” The subtle acting duet of Olga Barnet and Oleg Tabakov is part of the same paradigm. “White is the stripes under the rings,” wrote the Russian poet. Like the whiteness of starched collars, the unblemished shine of gray hair, the self-esteem of the President of the Royal Danish Scientific Society (the academic robe truly replaced the robe of a nobleman), so is this family precision of the interaction between Margret and Bora, the intelligent and unwaveringly faithful service of the heroine Olga Barnet to her “half of the couple” - elementary particles of self-awareness and “manner of living” that saved the world.

The acting duo Barnett and Tabakova constantly give a master class in human norms. Comme il faut - in its literal and basic meaning: comme il faut - as it should be.

And even if they are seriously and for a long time interested in explaining to the Moscow Art Theater audience the postulates of quantum physics, they act as some kind of native speakers.

The language of feelings, gestures, traditions, ceremonial dinners, relationships, which is native to them. And for the most part of society it’s somehow... half-forgotten.

It's been a long time since anyone said that not speaking this language is a shame.

...I don’t know whether Michael Frayn’s play itself is good (which, however, was awarded both the Moliere Prize and the Tony Award). The sound and diligent writing of a highly civilized man is somewhat anemic. (But it is the inner passion, the subtle mimicry of talent in the interplay of lines that make commonplaces eternal truths.) I don’t know whether “Copenhagen” will become a milestone for director Mindaugas Karbauskis (unlike his “Old World Landowners” on the New Stage of the Moscow Art Theater, a phantasmagoria, for sure hypnotically “guided” onto the audience by the creative will of the 24-year-old director). But I understand, it seems, the internal tasks of this premiere.

...Those played by Oleg Tabakov and Olga Barnet are so similar to the passing, almost gone, breed of Moscow professors of former times, unfamiliar to the “younger half” of the audience. Knowledge gave these people unshakable dignity. And – the scale of personality. They firmly believed that the future was born in their minds. They knew the value of brain biocurrents.

And, in fact, the future of the world is born in someone’s office.

None of them was on the same scale as Niels Bohr, but together they formed a kind of solid tortoise shell on which the world stands.

God knows why they failed to fully convey this personal nobility of the intellectual, this tribal dignity of the class to students and children. What was an axiom for society in the 1960s–1980s has now become in Russia something like Fermat’s theorem, which seems to have no proof.

And not only for the outside world, that’s the trouble! The bearers of knowledge themselves lose this internal magnificent confidence in their significance.

And therefore they lose the opportunity to convince the world and posterity of it.

“Native speakers” are leaving. The language is shrinking, crooked, grinning (just like Russian), losing its vocabulary and the population of those who can understand it.

A very dangerous process. But this is a long and not entirely theatrical conversation. Nevertheless, the Art Theater made almost the first remark in this conversation in many years. Clear. And sad.

...You're on your way home from the premiere. You remember Moscow houses and families from a long time ago. The legendary phrase of F.G. is spinning in the mind. Ranevskaya: “I’m so old, old... I still remember decent people - that’s how old I am!”

And the loudspeakers in the metro exult over the very top of the head: “Congratulations to Muscovites on their anniversary! Exactly ten years ago, a scanword was first published in Russian!”

Culture, March 6, 2003

Irina Alpatova

Confrontation between physicists and lyricists

"Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater

What is curious about the current Chekhov's Moscow Art Theater is its unpredictability. The once solid stage ship today resembles a fragile boat sailing on the open sea without a rudder, sails or a precise route. Risky and reckless. But this has its own appeal. The theater was partly like a pioneer traveler who set off on a journey “for interest”, picking up fellow travelers, faithful or random. The latter, by the way, can, on occasion, be thrown overboard. In the current, far from completed season, two freshly produced performances have already been removed from the repertoire. Perhaps a not fully realized experiment is just as risky when placed directly into auditorium. Instead of theater ticket the viewer buys a lottery ticket. Moreover, the list of star names does not guarantee winning. And vice versa. However, the public should be flattered by participation in a joint experiment. They trust her. They also check her. Such a topical concept of “box office” is often taken beyond the scope of theatrical play. This alone makes me want to take my hat off.

All this has the most direct relation to the premiere of the play "Copenhagen". Because this spectacle is unthinkable for today’s Moscow Art Theater stage. But what is there for the Moscow Art Theater, for anyone. Director Mindaugas Karbauskis promised that we will not see such an action anywhere else. That's for sure. A different theatrical dimension has been created, from which we were either weaned or were never taught. And the point here is not at all in the frightening abundance of words from playwright Michael Frayn, a good half of which, taken from the everyday life of theoretical physics, ordinary person and will not be able to pronounce it, and not in defiant intellectuality, and not in the complete absence of external action. We ate all this with more or less appetite. The point is different. Such dramaturgy was always accompanied by an appropriate directorial approach: verbosity (even of a high standard), as a rule, was camouflaged with elegant staging tricks or tear-squeezing “psychologism.” And all this is more than normal. Here the director, taking a risk, but voluntarily, chose to leave the well-worn and winning track, moreover, letting the author go ahead. I tried to stage a performance that was absolutely adequate to the play, forgetting about all kinds of self-expression. Although he could probably “express himself” wonderfully. Instead, he may hear reproaches that he has done little at all.

And the play is oh so difficult. Englishman Michael Frayn, known to the domestic public for his good comedy “Noise Behind the Stage,” suddenly gave the theater a surprise. Moreover, it makes you think: was it really intended for the theater? The range of audience and professional ratings ranges from “mediocre” to “brilliant.” Everything was mixed up: physics, politics, ethics, World War II, Germans, Danes, Jews, the atomic bomb, Hiroshima, the splitting of the atom, intellectual drama, thought and feeling, reality and memories, and so on and so forth. Everything goes in circles - first, second, third, spurred on by the ever-present refrain question: why did he come to Copenhagen? He is the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who visited his colleague, teacher and “father” Niels Bohr in 1941 in occupied Denmark. There is no exact answer, however. Or maybe Frayn prefers that each of us find it ourselves. In general, he is not at all concerned with writing a work that is suitable for the theater, adhering to clear dramatic canons: plot, climax, denouement and whatever else is needed. A lover and translator of Chekhov, he throws everything into one flask, shakes it and watches what happens. The same laboratory, or a seance, or a confrontation. It is interesting to read, but difficult and impossible to deliver. But - a series of prestigious literary awards. But - success on the commercial stage (however, in one of the European theaters Niels Bohr appeared on the stage in the costume of Adam). In general, Oleg Tabakov, the initiator of this production, really likes the play.

Well, then, in fact, the territory of the experiment begins. A laboratory situation where the experience is serious and the result is unpredictable. Partly a challenge, which, perhaps, is not always in harmony with the natural spiritual and creative needs. A little provocation, conscious or not. Because with everything else, “Copenhagen” is a kind of game to overcome all sorts of stereotypes: production, scenography, acting, audience. Karbauskis, however, has nothing to overcome yet due to his short stage practice. Although his colleagues of the same age, who also woke up famous not so long ago, having staged three or four performances, are already provoking the phrase: director N, as always... But this cannot be said about him, because he is interested in experimenting primarily with himself seems to be covered in blood.

It is much more difficult for actors, since the “uncertainty principle” introduced into scientific use by Heisenberg clearly dominates in the performance. And you have to exist exactly between two poles: “cold” and “hot”. Coolly ironic, functional and iconic scenography by Alexander Borovsky presents various combinations of light boards with a running line: dots, dashes, asterisks, dates, names, stage directions, unpronounced text. They are also garden benches, tombstones, swings, pulpits - depending on the current moment. And “warm”, homemade knitted suits by Svetlana Kalinina. Conversations are endlessly looped - from memories of children and ski trips to multi-minute lectures on the splitting of the atom, plus all of the above topics. And here’s another thing: Bohr - Oleg Tabakov, and his wife Margret - Olga Barnet, and Heisenberg - Boris Plotnikov do not quite fit into the category of people. Because in the interpretation of Frein, followed by Karbauskis, they have long since completed their earthly journey and, at the author’s behest, are only called back for a while. Where? Where? As who? Phantoms, immortal souls, eternal minds? Answer me. And play. Living smoke swirls from the Bohr-Tabakova tube. And non-existent tea or wine is “poured” into glasses and goblets. However, the slow-motion iconic appearance of the characters from the substage depths and their final descent there seem unnecessary even in such a minimalist direction, since they simply illustrate an already understandable text that sounds a minute later.

The desire of the actors to “play” is understandable, thereby emotionally warming up a serious problematic text. The director’s desire to limit and limit this game is also understandable, not allowing the corps de ballet of protons, as well as spontaneous acting overlaps and bathing in his own, “charismatic”. And it practically worked out, although it is clear how difficult and nervous such a result was. Not released into the wild, but also not turned into either dispassionately declaiming mannequins or dancing particles, the actor-characters remained very different, just as even “former” people can differ. More emotional, relaxed and touching in his sincerity, Plotnikov is Heisenberg, who has managed to become close to his character, and the unusually restrained Tabakov, who is still maintaining his distance from Bohr. But Barnet-Margret, in addition to direct acting functions, was given another unique role - the ideal spectator allowed on stage. An observer, not an outsider, but infinitely interested in the progress of the case. A timely question asked, an ironic assessment, a remark to the side - all this, if you do not lose sight of it, helps a little to orient yourself in what is happening and to successfully return back if you have fallen out of what is happening for some time.

But you can fall out. Easily. Which, in fact, happens to almost every viewer. And not at all because the performance is so boring, it’s just that we have also become unaccustomed to such concentration of attention on every word, every line. Either the text has long been memorized, as in the case of the thousand and first "The Seagull", or it does not require it. But at Copenhagen you won’t be able to sit comfortably in a chair and relax, half-eyed watching the stage. Here you need to make a strong effort to get involved in this difficult stage world and stay there until the end. You need to “work” in your own way along with the authors and characters. And even certain professional and spectator stereotypes no longer save, but, on the contrary, lead to “punctures”. Personally, for example, having a weakness for such theater, where there are fewer words and more “action,” I allowed myself to “turn off the sound” from time to time, trying to understand: is it possible to determine, visually, what is happening like this? It seemed possible. As it turned out in the finale, it’s impossible. And those who say: go to sleep, then wake up, nothing will change are completely wrong, on stage everyone is the same and talking about the same things. Maybe about that, but not so anymore. So it’s a shame for my own miscalculation and thanks for the science.

And one more thing. Impeccable, but still tiresome (in contrast to the usual entertainment), “Copenhagen” really hooks you and doesn’t leave you alone for a long time. And sometimes it provokes some inappropriate things. My colleague, for example, returned home, buried herself in encyclopedic reference books on physics, and the next day convincingly argued that the play and performance were created in the likeness of the theory of quantum mechanics. That’s how it is... In any case, you feel grateful that for once you are not being taken for a fool, not being amused, but being put in the place of an interlocutor and accomplice. On “Copenhagen” there are, of course, those running during intermission, but there are many more who want to understand: what is really going on? And since they talk to me so seriously, it means I have to live up to it. It’s probably still difficult to sincerely love this performance, it’s too different from everything we’re used to. But the fact that he finally appeared on the Moscow Art Theater stage, which had fairly compromised itself recently, appeared without any discounts, concessions or curtseys to the box office or the public, is an unconditional Moscow Art Theater victory.