Thomas Wartenberg reports on the play Copenhagen by Michael Frayn. The company has been both criticized and praised for the scope of its work within a minimalist imprimatur, works that offer “political, social, and cultural awareness.SUBSCRIBE NOW Theatre Copenhagen Our new film columnist has discovered an exciting new type of movie: there’s no screen and the parts are played by live actors, in real time. He is recognized as one of a handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction.Ĭesear’s Forum, a small theatre collective that produces intermittently, continues its mission of interpreting unusual or lesser known plays and sharing those perceptions regionally. Wide-ranging and prolific his work extends to documentary film, television and philosophy. Novels include: Towards the End of Morning, Headlong and Spies. His plays include: NOISES OFF, DEMOCRACY, AFTERLIFE, DONKEY’S YEARS and he is highly regarded as a translator of plays by Anton Chekhov. After leaving the Observer he continued to write as a columnist as well as publishing novels and plays for television and stage. He began his career as a reporter for the Guardian and later the Observer. Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933. Concepts of physics “how did I get here?” and politics “am I right? am I wrong?” resonates with Frayn’s accessible language and use of images. Within a stark fictional present, the audience becomes aware that each character, “inside their heads” is permitted to shift subsequent speculation, memory and points of view. Physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, alongside Niels wife Margrethe, cannot agree on certain facts of the purported meeting. The minimalist stage play is both haunting and ruminative in tone. Adapted as a film in 2002, it was produced by the BBC and presented on PBS in the United States. Presented in London in 1998 at the National Theatre, it opened on Broadway in 2000 and won the Tony Award for Best Play.

The play, set in the present but rooted in the past, concerns three historical characters, and their correlation to subsequent nuclear threat, policy, power and human motivation.

Based on a true 1941 meeting in occupied Denmark, Cesear’s Forum is offering Michael Frayn’s drama COPENHAGEN, in a limited six-week September/October engagement, at Kennedy’s Down Under, Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio.