Copenhagen opens as live shows return to the Hatbox Theatre
The Hatbox Theatre will reopen on July 24 with Phylloxera Productions’s staging of Copenhagen, the first show at the small Concord theater since it closed its doors in the spring.
Friends and physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg were the world’s leading experts in nuclear fission during World War II. With their countries at war — Bohr was from Germany and Heisenberg was from Denmark — and Germany racing to develop atomic weapons, meeting would be a dangerous endeavor. Copenhagen, written by Michael Frayn,is a speculative look at what happened during the secret meeting between the two men that took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1941.
The playpremiered at the National Theatre in London in 1998 and opened on Broadway in 2000. It won numerous prestigious awards, including the Drama Desk Award for Best New Play, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play and the Tony Award for Best Play.
Director and producer Gary Locke first read the script for Copenhagen 12 years ago after he had seen several actors perform monologues from the play as part of their auditions for his productions.
“They were such rich, complex and wonderful monologues, and that made me curious about [the play],” Locke said. “I started reading it, thinking I’d be reading a story about World War II, but what I got was insight into the way the world works philosophically, emotionally — from every standpoint. It’s been on my radar [to produce] ever since.”
The three-person cast depicts Heisenberg, Bohr and Bohr’s wife Margrethe.
“It’s a wonderful play for actors,” said Jim Sears, the actor playing Niels Bohr. “There isn’t a lot of fanfare to it. It’s just three people and their interactions, with nothing else in the way. It’s one of those plays where you [as an actor] discover who you are during rehearsals.”
Though Copenhagen is chock full of science-related dialogue, audience members do not need to be fluent in the scientific concepts to enjoy the play, Locke said.
“I don’t want to convey the idea that it’s dense, not interesting and not fun,” he said. “It’s really a fascinating slice of history and character study of these three people.”
The play was originally scheduled to open in late April. The actors started learning their lines last fall and rehearsing in January, but in March, Covid-19 brought their in-person rehearsals to a halt. Still, they continued running their lines together over the video conferencing platform Zoom.
“We had to have a way to keep interacting and repeating the words while looking at each other,” Sears said. “It’s an incredibly pale [way of rehearsing] relative to being on stage with the other actors, but it was all we could do, and it was necessary.”
Locke said that because the play only has three cast members he “never had any doubt that it could still go forward in the era of Covid,” and he had always planned on bringing it to the stage as soon as theaters were allowed to reopen.
“This is a massive work of memorization for these actors, so they had already put a big commitment into it at that point, and I owed it to them not to cancel,” he said, adding that, even though the actors will be paid less than expected due to the limit on ticket sales, “I never heard a single complaint or doubt from any of them.”
Copenhagen
Where: Hatbox Theatre, Steeplegate Mall, 270 Loudon Road, Concord
When: Friday, July 24, through Sunday, Aug. 9, with performances on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Tickets: $18 for adults; $15 for theater members, seniors and students; and $12 for senior theater members.
Covid-19 guidelines: Audience members will be required to social distance and wear face masks during the performance.
Contact: 715-2315, hatboxnh.com
