The people behind Oppenheimer are a young and dynamic lot, perhaps kindred spirits to the Manhattan Project physicists. The play is directed by Angus Jackson, who likes “doing contentious plays” — a promising start (http://go.nature.com/6N9I9m). Morton-Smith, the playwright, seems to find a source of inspiration in physics: his 2008 play Uncertainty drew on ideas from quantum mechanics. And the actors were purposefully selected to be close to the age of the actual scientists they are portraying, who had an average age of 25. When I sat down I was instantly drawn into the simple set stage: a brick wall, a blackboard, a piano and two iron bars looming above. As the play began, the black flooring quickly filled up with chalk scribblings of diagrams and equations.
Robert Oppenheimer is certainly no stranger to the stage or screen, so Morton-Smith had his work cut out for him. To his credit, he did not attempt a documentary, but rather sought to pay the character respect by balancing fact and myth. As he said in the panel discussion that preceded the show, he views his play as a “journey from idealism to cynicism”; a story about the loss of innocence. Indeed, the play opens with the young physicists in Berkeley, equally excited about the new physics and communist ideals. It continues with the hurdles of the project, the race to deliver the bomb in time, and ends with realization, regret and helplessness.
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