The idea's the thing
Wren, Celia
ters dip in boiling vats of wildflower dye, nimbly he sorts out the threads of the au- dible world: music and a warbling dove in Celia Wren a Tehran shop; a cat's low yowl; the tum-...
...Moral choic- while the story dwindles in the rear- ences so intently, seems formidable and es seem ambiguous-Heisenberg is torn view mirror...
...the tumbling rush of a brook...
...Directed by ic blunders...
...Off Broadway, no fewer than hagen...
...In the clockwork universe a teacher at his school...
...In Frayn's no-nonsense drama of ideas, respective fates, The Color of Paradise pro- Stoppard and other authors, includ- such lines volley back and forth with all ceeds with the clarity and inevitability of fable, striking hardly a false note until the very end, when Majidi attempts a closing visual gesture sure to strike some "Experimenting as sentimental and intrusive...
...El PO Box 300 Garrison, NY 10524-0300 Rand Richards Cooper is the author of The 914 424 3671 Last to Go and Big as Life...
...Subsequent re- ratory's sterility...
...The work of Heisenberg and God, the beauties of a larger realm in- ally, really small), you can know either colleagues like Niels Bohr, by contrast, visible to us all-and yet the film never the position or the velocity of a particle, seems to argue for choice-for the mysloses its grasp on vivid human actuali- but not both...
...Much modParadise is that it works both as spiritu- newcomer to the footlights, or to culture ern biology seems to rule out free will, al parable and as a richly detailed, in general...
...Hashem, lost in his troubles, pays no attention...
...God is not way, audiences were flocking to Michael welcome alternative to more determinvisible," he says, repeating the words of Frayn's Copenhagen, about the German istic science...
...You can see him physicist Werner Heisenberg and his outlined by Newton and his followers, through your fingertips...
...On Broad- quantum mechanics seems to provide a grandmother's lined face...
...Moreover, by attributing ty...
...ghetto, at least here in Man- tum physics for metaphorical resonance, Majidi and his director of photogra- hattan, where laboratory- sometimes just in passing...
...The imbalance becomes strained...
...The British journal New Theatre with wildflowers, a line of trees atop a three new dramas about mathematics Quarterly has even run a series of articles hillside, swaying seas of alfalfa...
...And the Frayn's work with another idea-heavy hardly invites casual chat...
...The three actors turn in faultless ("Words...
...the arrangement pays the script full tribute...
...Was Heisen- of-war...
...ous ninety minutes of joy and sorrow For information about the Franciscan Friars and had already wonderfully pulled off: letSisters of the Atonement, contact: ting us see the hand of God at work in the ceaselessly active hands of a brave Vocation Director Grarmoor ~e blind boy...
...and Guildenstern Are Dead), the scenes uncertainty principle...
...ters dip in boiling vats of wildflower dye, nimbly he sorts out the threads of the audible world: music and a warbling dove in Celia Wren a Tehran shop...
...But they spend sonality, and, by explaining the alieneventually worked at Los Alamos, assert- most of the play standing ramrod straight, ation of his dimwitted actress wife, Annie ed, on the contrary, that his former pro- gazing at each other across a wooden (Jennifer Ehle), pave the way for future tege had been fishing for information to arena whose simplicity suggests a labo- plot twists...
...n Stoppard's captivating past in particular, to pin down exactly And he may not know himself-no study of love, thought melds what happened in 1941 when Heisenberg, human being, Copenhagen suggests, can I seamlessly with narrative then a prominent scientist in Nazi Ger- be sure of his or her own motives...
...Steering father and son toward their and quantum mechanics...
...Even when the two hours, Frayn's characters re-enact kerings and excellent powers of con- thought is dizzyingly complex (Hapgood) variations on the 1941 episode, while the centration, but the play's relentless or existentially terrifying (Rosencrantz script draws innumerable parallels to the cerebral forays can also be frustrating...
...many, visited Bohr in occupied Denmark...
...The fascinated with the uncertainty princi- strates (it may appear) that our ideas religious meanings are there for the tak- ple, which states, roughly, that at quan- and feelings are chemically preproing-the blindness of a life without tum level (that is, where things get re- grammed...
...To me it with tradition seemed simply unnecessary, an attempt to deliver too literally a feat the previ- since 1898...
...Modern writers have been while some biomedical research demonspecifically imagined human story...
...El Commonweal 18 June 16, 2000...
...We put man back sunglasses, and when his face puckers the reality," as Tom Stoppard explained at the center of the universe," Heiseninto a sob, it's heart-wrenching...
...down on the action from a ledge in the as well as Ehle and the brilliant Dillane, Did Heisenberg make a series of scientif- wooden backdrop...
...are] innocent, neutral, preberg, as he later claimed, trying to rally performances, managing to suggest, cise ...but when they get their corners Bohr and other physicists to boycott A- through voice and sheer presence, both knocked off, they're no good any more"), bomb development on moral grounds...
...Riding a bus with his father, he reaches his hand out the THE IDEA'S THE THING open window...
...Quantum physics, on the other hand, allows modem writers to flirt with this attractive state of being, without actually committing themselves to it...
...but we understand perfectly the reality of Mohammad's life, with its cience has escaped from its ing Thomas Pynchon, have mined quannever-ending quest to grasp the invisible...
...In comparison, a work like Heisenberg's recollections do not agree- mileage from the uncertainty principle Copenhagen, firing off its scientific referso there's no certitude there...
...Commonweal 1 7 June 16, 2000 the subtlety of an artillery barrage- between patriotism and broader com- all the more obvious if one compares though, to be fair, the narrative premise passion for the human race...
...The Real Thing is Stoppard at aid the German cause...
...Heisenberg's principle and tery of things...
...I want to catch the wind," `Copenhagen' & 'The Real Thing' he says...
...Hard facts vanish Frayn treats his play like a kind of the- that contain it have a disarming gameinto the haze of memory-Bohr's and atrical subcompact, getting maximum like spirit...
...The theater produced now then again, a play touchSound of Music-style panoramas of the scene, in particular, has been awash in ing on some of the same issues as CopenIranian countryside: meadows brilliant theorems...
...in Hapgood, his 1988 spoof about spies berg boasts in Copenhagen...
...Chicago-based S phy, Mohammad Davoodi, have filled minted ideas and images are playwright Penny Penniston recently The Color of Paradise with sumptuous, gaining ever wider currency...
...Such an open-minded approach recalls Keats's 1817 theory of negative capability-"when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...
...As Mohammad, Mohzen Ramezani, related quantum truths also imply that an uncanny meaning to human percephimself obviously blind, wears an over- by observing a particle, you interfere tion, quantum physics reassures us of sized grin and incongruous, movie-star with it...
...intellectual rigor and determination to for example, his ideas flesh out his perBohr, who fled Denmark in 1943 and battle existential terror...
...and character development...
...Heisenberg (the human character proves as elusive as any drama playing a few blocks away: Tom ever-imposing Michael Cumpsty), Bohr quantum particle: the reserved Margrethe, Stoppard's The Real Thing, last seen on (Philip Bosco), and Bohr's wife Margrethe who observes the two men with near-sci- Broadway in 1984...
...uncertainty principle...
...Blair Brown) are supposedly meeting entific attentiveness, cannot tell whether after death to hash out the secrets of the the German scientist is a friend or a traitor...
...Or did he deliberately steer might allude-yet again-to quantum David Leveaux, the production reminds research in the wrong direction...
...Startlingly, around a his best, and this marvelous revival, search into the Nazi bomb-building proj- dozen audience members are actually which features splendid performances ect, vastly inferior to its Allied counter- seated at the rear of the stage, looking by Nigel Lindsay and Sarah Woodward, part, has generated still more questions...
...With Heisenberg around, you can champion uncertainty and mystery, then blame it Uncertainty abounds all on science...
...ideas can be...
...physics, emphasizing the eerie signifi- you just how scintillating a drama of Copenhagen wrests these possibilities, cance of observing...
...and their philosophical implications, into Observing Copenhagen itself may thrill Stoppard's scripts sparkle because he a maze of metaphysics...
...Michael Blakemore's production offers When the successful playwright Henry Controversy has swirled around this his- few distractions to this intellectual tug- (Stephen Dillane) rants about writing torical episode ever since...
...Over the course of well-rested viewers with academic han- sports with ideas...
...The act of observing determines our own importance...
...Plays-of-ideas that, like Stoppard's creations, really play, operate under a sort of aesthetic uncertainty principle-a willingness to entertain a large number of diverse, and sometimes contradictory concepts, without clinging to any one too long...
...one can (theoretically) calculate, and What's so winning about The Color of Heisenberg (1901-76) is not exactly a hence predict, everything...
...of Mohammad's hands, irrepressibly ex- wheeling through its second season de- To the thoughtful person, after all, ploring everything-plants, a stream, his voted to drama about science...
...These opened in April and May, while the am- discussing the theatricality of the uncerbroad vistas alternate with close studies bitious Ensemble Studio Theater was tainty principle and corollary axioms...
Vol. 127 • June 2000 • No. 12
