Farm Hall - Jermyn Street / Theatre Royal Haymarket

Just come out of today's matinee. Liked it a lot. In a way it's similar to the recent Oyster Problem at the same venue, but this time it's physicists rather than writers who spend the play batting ideas back and forth. This has the additional factor of the backbiting between those who were Party Men and those who kept themselves morally pure (and the reasons why each did what they did). Thoroughly absorbing, the 90 minutes flew past. It's beautifully played by all involved. Highly recommended.

The Bath tour date was back in April, I think. Weird that they only visited one other venue after the London run.

Short filler for this at TRH for 30 shows from August 07th

tickets.trh.co.uk/WEBPAGES/EntaWebShow/ShowPerformance.aspx

Merged

Some very very good acting on display here. Could do with a little more pace and no interval IMO. Fascinating topic. Rather well done.

Really enjoyed this. Old fashioned tacky talky stuff. I advise if you really know nothing that you look up Farm Hall on t’internet so you know what is going on. V interesting to put alongside Copenhagen. Not quite in that league but the subject overlaps and they inform each other. Lovely acting by them all. Love having serious plays in the West End

It's ok == seems very bitty and old-fashioned and the interval is just a cash grab to get people to go to the bar. It's a nice burst of seriousness in the West End but not very exciting, sadly, especially compared to the previous (better) play with Nat Parker and Jamie Bogyo on exactly the same topic.

I think the interval is very well placed, with a significant event signalling a big change in the dynamics.

I LOVED this evening's performance, and found this just as good as "Operation Epsilon."

It's also a marvellous showcase for 6 wonderful character actors.

Some spoilers follow. . .

With all the extra players, "Operation Epsilon" felt more like a depiction of what "Farm Hall" might actually have been like. I also found "Operation Epsilon" funnier because of the cheery British officer frequently interjecting to scheme against and manipulate the German scientists.

But having only 6 cast members, depicting only the most key German scientists, allows much better character definition and development in this production.

Another improvement in this version is the more enigmatic and sinister depiction of Alan Cox's Heisenberg ("You're the only one who's secret thoughts I cannot read," admits Masson's Hahn), who came off as more of a transparently egotistical Trumpian buffoon in "Operation Epsilon."

In both plays, the nuclear fission inventing Hahn is the moral conscience of the piece, and like Nathaniel Parker in the other play, Forbes Masson is equally good in this as a man who understands his culpability in being "a destroyer of worlds," and he brings the gravitas that makes us feel the stakes of the play.

The first half of this play is all character building and revelation, and this pays off in the second half, which is thus the more exciting half.

If Masson brings the feels, nicely supported and tag-teamed by David Yelland's Von Laue, and Cox brings the mystery, Julius D'Silva's Diebner offers a fascinating weirdly sympathetic portrayal of a blunt experimental physicist outsider, mistreated by the more conceited theoreticians, who cuts through their pretensions easily, but who ultimately is a frightening depiction of someone willing to do evil as if it's just a job, and justifies it all too easily.

Archie Backhouse and Daniel Boyd, as the younger two scientists, acolytes of Heisenberg, are also wonderful, the former full of artistic knowledge and cultural pretensions, the latter loaded with sympathetic sounding excuses, but both actually mini-mes of the more transparent Diebner.

All in all, I adored this production, and found it complemented rather than supplanted the equally excellent "Operation Epsilon." So glad this transferred to the tune of 4 stars, in my estimation.

Not obtrusive at all, view from front row was great so I'd say go for it.