Oppenheimer
Tom Morton-Smith's play at the RSC
"We could make a star on the surface of the Earth" a terrifying, if beautiful image, which brings back all those childhood nightmares of bright flashes and mushroom clouds.
Tom Morton-Smith's script is sharp and intelligent and the energetic direction by Angus Jackson whips the action along, whether we are at a left wing fundraiser for Spain or in the physics lab at Berkley. There were moments where the audience, playing the role of a lecture theatre of students, were treated to enthusiastic mini physics lectures. Personally, I could have taken more physics 101, as it's a subject I find baffling and fascinating at the same time.
A huge amount of the success of this production is down to the cast, as expected there is tremendous ensemble work here, with stand-out performances from Thomasin Rand as Kitty Oppenheimer, seemingly permanently pregnant and spiralling into alcoholism and Ben Allen as Edward Teller, the Hungarian physicist an advocate for the hydrogen bomb and permanent thorn in Oppenheimer's side. John Heffernan's Oppenheimer (Oppie) is exceptional. A compelling portrayal of a man wrestling madly with the morality of what he is trying to achieve and labouring under the misapprehension that the Germans were way ahead and the consequences of the Nazis developing the bomb first was unimaginably horrific. He is by turns totally driven and utterly conflicted, he confesses to "having dropped a loaded gun in a children's playground" and his slow, by degrees, collapse is heartbreaking.
This play is a triumph and I sincerely hope it has life after the run ends in Stratford. I am seriously considering seeing it again.
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." - J. Robert Oppenheimer
Alison Kirkwood