Michael Frayn’s dense play delights some, baffles others 

Hampstead Theatre

The critics had furrowed brows over this revivial of Michael Frayn‘s complex story of a mysterious wartime meeting between two physicists, one Danish and one German, in which the play itself (and Joanna Scotcher‘s set) becomes a metaphor for quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.  The Times critics found himself ‘stumbling in the dark’, but BroadwayWorld gave it five stars, finding it ‘creates genuine tension’. The critics generally praised the cast of three, Alex Kingston,  Damien Moloney and Richard Schiff, although they were disappointed that the latter fluffed his lines. Michael Longhurst directs.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

5 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

Gary Naylor at BroadwayWorld found: ‘It’s terribly clever, the kind of chewy material that requires a decent night’s sleep beforehand, but it could be very dry, more the stuff of a contentious panel at a symposium, but Frayn’s dialogue and boldness in trusting his audience creates genuine tension and we sway between the men and the ideas, knowing now what they didn’t then.’

4 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑

WhatsOnStage‘s Sarah Crompton had this to say about the cast: ‘Alex Kingston is simply superb as Margrethe, bringing a sardonic tone of reality to the men’s endless debate, often sitting at the centre of the circle, while Damien Molony is engagingly restless and questing as Heisenberg, a man who thinks as fast and dangerously as he skis. He perhaps looks a little too young as the 40-year-old Heisenberg, while Richard Schiff, at 70, is a little too old for Bohr. But the age gap emphasises the pseudo father and son relationship between them, and Schiff’s occasional hesitations are combined with a graceful sense of doubt which suits the character of a man who constantly strove to be fair.’

Tom Wicker for The Stage described how ‘As the characters engage on the black, water-ringed circle of Joanna Scotcher’s set – redolent of both an atom and a doomsday clock in its markings – Longhurst keeps us viscerally aware of how history and time don’t progress on a straight line, but constantly surround and shape each other. A blinding flash from lighting designer Neil Austin’s chain of bulbs starkly adds to the warning weight of Frayn’s words.’

Despite the first night fluffs, The Telegraph‘s Dominic Cavendish declared that the play ‘brilliantly fuses the unreliability of memory and unknowability of behaviour with Heisenberg’s own Uncertainty Principle.’ About the proudtcion, he said: ‘Longhurst answers the brain-boxy material with visual dazzle, avoiding static lecture-mode with a double-revolve that shifts the trio’s positions, combining meditative restlessness with a suggestion of atomic particles.’

3 stars ⭑⭑⭑

Time Out‘s Andrzej Lukowski reported: ‘There is so much talking. It is a dense, unabashedly ideas-heavy play. It is often thrillingly clever, but its density can be tough for us and clearly tough on the cast – of the three actors it’s only Molony who seemed 100 percent on top of the text on press night, both in terms of not stumbling occasionally and also feeling entirely present in the character.’ He concluded: ‘it’s remarkable, but less explosive than it once was.’

The Guardian‘s Arifa Akbar was also underwhelmed: ‘It is a handsome production, the dense science-talk in the play’s second half is made clear… yet it does not always manage to lay bare the metaphors and bigger meanings of the science. Tension comes and goes, the dialogue not quite drawing out the characters’ emotional torments which lie beneath the surface’.

Matt Wolf for LondonTheatre, expressing a lack of enthusiasm spoke of ‘a play that has always had about it the whiff of a graduate seminar and here looks as if it is being visibly flayed by its creatives to whip its philosophical and scientific conundrums into vigorous, properly theatrical life.’

Demetrios Matheou at The Arts Desk noted: ‘the ideas and the moral conundrums here are, for the most part, completely absorbing. The spell is only broken, in fact, by the actors…Schiff doesn’t seem entirely comfortable. On opening night he stumbled quite a few times, almost always over the science-speak; and his transitions between warm, almost naïve old scientist and rage don’t always work. Kingston starts off in a slightly too melodramatic register, just a bit too blunt, though she does come into her own as Margrethe becomes a more prominent intermediary in the second half. And both of those actors have plenty of charisma to keep us on board, even when not giving their A game. In the meantime, Molony really shines’.

The Times’ Clive Davis admitted to scratching his head: ‘Frayn is, after all, attempting to make one of the most complex subjects accessible to a mainstream audience. And his dialogue is peppered with the witticisms that have become his trademark. The fact remains, though, that unless you have a thorough grounding in the subject, there are long passages in Michael Longhurst’s revival at Hampstead Theatre where many of us will be stumbling in the dark.’

Critics’ average rating 3.6⭑

Copenhagen can be seen at Hampstead Theatre until 2 May 2026. Buy tickets directly from the theatre

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