Farm Hall review

As various combinations of the sextet pop in and out of the room, they talk about everything except science. “There’s a cat in the garden,” says Kurt Diebner (a wonderfully acid Julius D’Silva), the most exciting thing that’s happened that day. They play chess, they read, squabble, mend a piano, put on an all-male production of Blithe Spirit. 

But, as time passes, they clash. We find out that Erich Bagge and Diebner were, in the interests of self-preservation and selfish advancement, card-carrying members of the Nazi Party. David Yelland’s furrowed, stately Max von Laue refused to join; Alan Cox’s inscrutable Werner Heisenberg consistently told Hitler’s government that the creation of an atomic bomb was not possible. Was he incompetent or deliberately slowing progress to stop the unthinkable? Then the bomb drops on Hiroshima and the scientists are completely blindsided. Some feel ashamed that German advancements – Forbes Masson’s jovial Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission – led to American ‘success’. Others are disgusted that the bomb was deployed at all.

Anchored by strong performances, it’s a straightforward production of a deeply complex play. Moar never tells us what to think about these men. She lets conflicting ideas brew: ideas about shame, national and personal pride, and culpability. Occasionally Unwin puts pressure on the fourth wall – a few of the more serious lines come straight at the audience, weightily and portentously delivered, and it feels patronising. But when the action stays in the room, between these characters, and we’re the eavesdropping bugs, the piece finds its greatest power.