THEATRE ROYAL HAYMARKET

FARM HALL

Written Katherine Moar

Directed by Stephen Unwin

In Spring 1945, British and American forces advancing into Germany abducted the leading scientists in Hitler’s nuclear weapons program. The group of six German scientists could have won the Nazis  the War!

The scientists were held in Farm Hall, a bucolic country house in Cambridgeshire, for seven months. The house was bugged, and their debates, confessions, dread and banter poured into the hidden microphones. Katherine Moar’s astonishing new play is based on the transcript of their conversations.

 Moar has written a masterpiece. The play focuses on the group's internal conflict. The scientists known as ‘Uranverein’ (Uranium Club) confront their involvement in the War. Moar combines hilarious wit with brooding introspection to create characters who inspire repulsion and admiration within the audience;  the audience is morally repulsed yet emotionally attracted to the German scientists' sinister charm; this internal ambivalence is gripping and uncomfortable.

Trapped for seven months in their gilded cage with the phantom of war guilt, these geniuses attempt to construct moral justifications; Dr Hahn (Forbes Masson) and Dr Von Laue (David Yelland) proclaim to have “falsified the mathematics” to prevent the development of the Bomb. This story is rapidly abandoned when they consider this would have made them traitors to Germany: “We will get shot on the streets”.

The desperate attempts to divorce themselves from the horrors of the Naiz regime is a remarkable window into the minds of the Germans who were emerging from the rubble of the Third Reich.

The scientists' minds race to find excuses and distractions from the guilt and despair. They create games, drink, debate, and play music.

Weizsäker (Daniel Boyd) and Bagge (Archie Backhouse) are waking up from their self-induced moral slumber. Their war shame conflicts with their residual loyalty to Germany. Bagge fails to conform to the swaggering arrogance of a German lieutenant  with a new pair of boots, but he gives the impression that he would still fit comfortably into a Nazi uniform.

Diebner (Julius D’Silva) played a more sinister role. He conforms to the archetypal "Nazi scientist"; a genius whose morals have been dissolved in a test tube of acidic fanaticism. His charm is uncomfortably attractive. D’Sliva held the audience with his Wagnerian bass voice.

Heisenberg (Alan Cox), Hahn, and Von Laue continually express their opposition to the Nazi regime. They construct stories in order to exonerate their characters. These include Heisenberg's claims he deliberately sabotaged the project with false equations. However, none of these geniuses can fully face the collective moral responsibility. When they hear that the Americans have succeeded in Japan they feel professional jealousy.

Germany was prevented from building nuclear bombs because they conducted a self-lobotomy; the law for the ‘Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’ passed in 1933 prevented Jewish scientists from working in important academic positions. This forced 50% of German nuclear physicists to leave Germany. There were further acts of intellectual self-mutilation with the introduction of the ‘Deutsche Physik’ which sought to exercise the influence of Jewish science from pure ‘Aryan’ science. Furthermore, the regime never fully backed a nuclear project, instead devoting resources to V2 rocks. A lack of resources, passive resistance  and clear vision prevented the Germans from ever building a bomb.

The acting stirred and inspired genuine internal conflict within the audience over the Uranium Club. Stephen Unwin (Director) and Ceci Calf (Set and Costume Designer) brought the atmosphere of 1940s Farm Hall to life.  Katherine Moar’s debut - she is still at King's College London University -  is an astounding achievement. Moar, I look forward to seeing staged in Berlin!

Strabo Newman