On Sept. 30, playwright Michael Frayn will be at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble signing copies of his new novel, "Headlong," but New York will likely see and hear a lot more of Frayn's writing come early spring. That's when his hit London play, Copenhagen, is expected to reach Broadway.
Production spokesperson Adrian Bryan-Brown told Playbill On-Line the show will likely arrive in March-April 2000 but has yet to choose a theatre. As he did for the current UK run, Michael Blakemore will direct, though an American cast is being sought for the New York mounting. Casting is anticipated "soon." Lead producers on the play are the Nederlander Organization, Elizabeth McCann and Terry Allen Kramer.
Copenhagen received its world premiere at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe venue May 28, 1998 and later transferred to the West End's Duchess Theatre, where it was at first scheduled to run to Aug. 7 but is now selling tickets through Feb. 5, 2000.
The play follows German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who, in 1941, made a trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends, and their work together had opened the way into the atom, but now they were on opposite sides of a world war, and the meeting would end in disaster. Scientists and historians have argued ever since about why Heisenberg went and what the two men said to each other. Copenhagen retraces their journey through the mysteries of the world around us -- and on into the even stranger mysteries of the world within.
Michael Frayn's stage plays include Alphabetical Order, Make and Break and Noises Off, all of which received Evening Standard Awards for Best Comedy of the Year and Benefactors which received the Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year. His translated work includes The Cherry Orchard and Wild Honey for the National, Three Sisters, The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. He has published eight novels, a volume of philosophy and wrote the screenplays for "Clockwise," starring John Cleese, and "First and Last," which won an international Emmy Award. Director Blakemore has had a long association with Frayn, directing many of the plays mentioned. His most recent work is the musical The Life by Cy Coleman in New York which received 12 Tony nominations, and the award-winning City of Angels in the West End. He had an Off-Broadway hit in 1995-96 with Death Defying Acts, three one act plays by Woody Allen, David Mamet and Elaine May. A former associate director at the RNT, Blakemore's many productions there include The Front Page, Long Day's Journey into Night and After the Fall.
