Copenhagen on the Hudson Begin Previews, March 23 | Playbill

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News Copenhagen on the Hudson Begin Previews, March 23 Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, a hit in London for more than a year, will begin previews at Broadway's Royale Theatre, March 23; the show will open April 11, 2000.

Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, a hit in London for more than a year, will begin previews at Broadway's Royale Theatre, March 23; the show will open April 11, 2000.

Philip Bosco, whose many credits include Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo and the recent Lincoln Center Theater Twelfth Night, co-stars in Copenhagen, opposite Blair Brown and Michael Cumpsty. Brown, who recently left the cast of James Joyce's The Dead at the Belasco Theatre, has also appeared in Cabaret and The Secret Rapture. She's arguably better known for her film work in "Altered States," "Continental Divide" and "One Trick Pony," and for being television's Molly Dodd. Cumpsty's recent Broadway roles have included 1776, Racing Demon and Translations.

Michael Blakemore, fresh from his success with Kiss Me, Kate, will direct Frayn's three-character, psychological drama. Producing the work are The Nederlander Organization, Roger Berlind, Scott Rudin, Ray Larsen, Jon B. Platt and Elizabeth I. McCann, with Michael Codron and London's Royal National Theatre. Copenhagen received its world premiere at the RNT's Cottesloe venue May 28, 1998 and later transferred to the West End's Duchess Theatre.

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 and a volume of philosophy and has written 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, staging many of the plays mentioned.

* Those curious about the play Copenhagen and the real life events that inspired it should drop by Graduate Center of the City University of New York (365 Fifth Avenue) on March 27, when Frayn and Blakemore discuss the evolution of the Broadway bound work.

Joining Frayn and Blakemore on the panel will be Nobel Laureate physicists Hans Bethe and John Wheeler, and writer and physicist Brian Greene. For information on the 7:30 PM event, call (212) 817-8215.

The panel will serve as a preview event to the Ensemble Studio Theatre's second annual "First Light" festival of new plays addressing issues of science and technology. The fest runs April 5-30, and includes a premiere production of Arthur Giron's Moving Bodies, a drama about yet another physicist, Richard Feynman, who worked on both the Manhattan Project and the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Chris Smith directs.

Also feature in the festival are 11 play workshops and a studio production of Bob Clyman's The Secret Order.

 
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