‘The Physicists’ on BBC Radio 3

Just one week on from airing Michael Frayn’s ‘Copenhagen’, Radio 3 will be broadcasting another play featuring physicists – and this time they’re mad. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s ‘The Physicists’ was first staged in 1962 and was revived at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2012 to rather mixed reviews. Set in a lunatic asylum, ‘The Physicists’ is less intellectually demanding than ‘Copenhagen’ but the two plays are linked by the sense of a possible nuclear threat. The new BBC Radio 3 version will feature actors Samantha Bond and Geoffrey Whitehead and goes out at 8.30pm on Sunday 20th January 2013.

Turning the Page: Interpreting Copenhagen

Two new interviews are available in anticipation of Sunday’s broadcast of Michael Frayn’s ‘Copenhagen at 8.30pm on Radio 3, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Frayn was interviewed by Michael Sweet on Radio 3’s Night Waves earlier this week. The pair discussed the science behind ‘Copenhagen’ as well as the radio version of Frayn’s book ‘Skios’. Speculating on why Heisenberg may have visited Bohr in 1941, Frayn suggested that “one understands oneself through one’s relations with other people.” He commented that perhaps Heisenberg wanted to “see the reflection of himself in Bohr to understand himself better.”

In another interview, the Radio Times spoke with the cast of ‘Copenhagen’ during a break in the recording of of the play. Simon Russell Beale, who plays Bohr, revealed that he is ‘hopeless at the page-turning’. Beale is no stranger to radio scripts but it seems the lengthy speeches in ‘Copenhagen’ were enough to give even this highly accomplished actor a sleepless night.