In the summer of 1945, after Adolf Hitler was defeated and the allies had almost secured victory in the second world war, six German scientists were taken and held at a stately home in Cambridgeshire.
The group, known as the Uranverein (Uranium Club) were leading lights in Germany’s nuclear weapons programme and part of the race to produce the world’s first atomic bomb. They were detained at Farm Hall for seven months, all their conversations covertly recorded.
We see those men in Katherine Moar’s riveting drama with nothing to do but play chess, bicker and pick over their part in Hitler’s war. It unravels like an intelligent thriller whose ending we know but is nail-biting nonetheless – all the more an achievement given this is Moar’s debut.
A drama inspired by the original recorded conversations and directed by Stephen Unwin with elegant economy, it is packed with learning but never shows off, providing just enough knowledge for a scene to carry its full meaning.
Heisenberg (Alan Cox) is Uranium Club head and group leader here; his friend, Weizsäker (Daniel Boyd), has family links to the Third Reich, Bagge (Archie Backhouse) is an apologetic Nazi party member while Von Laue (David Yelland) was a vocal objector to the regime and Hahn (Forbes Masson) grapples with guilt for discovering nuclear fission (a key factor in the creation of the atomic bomb). Last, there is group pariah, Diebner (Julius D’Silva), who guiltlessly admits to supporting the Nazis. Every actor brings their character’s moral position alive and gives quietly searing performances.
These positions are artfully played out in dialogue: some refuse to acknowledge responsibility, others boast of open resistance to Hitler but everyone is implicated in some way. “I needed the work,” says one man, about his collaboration. “The world is ugly, the work is beautiful,” says another, and there are echoes of CP Taylor’s Good in the ways they absolve themselves from blame.
We only ever see them in a drawing room whose fireplace and peeling wallpaper carries a battered country-house grandeur (design by Ceci Calf). There is awkward comedy at the start, and in their boredom they resemble Beckett’s men; their keeper, referred to repeatedly but remaining off stage, a Godot-like figure who never emerges. That tone shifts in intensity when they hear of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings which bring – shockingly – intellectual admiration and jealousy, along with guilt for some.
Hahn’s sense of culpability over the scientific discovery that led to the bombing is excellently dramatised. Heisenberg’s ambivalence is explored too – did he sabotage his own scientific breakthrough as a way to resist Hitler’s regime? The question lingers at the end of this punchy, accomplished play.
At Jermyn Street theatre until 8 April.
