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THOSE who bewail the dumbing down of the West End should get an eyeful of this: a three-hour play about nuclear physics with not a star name in sight. After a muchpraised run at Stratford, the RSC’s best piece of new writing in years settles triumphantly into its London berth.
This is the second time I’ve seen Oppenheimer and the scale of its achievement seems even greater: ambitious writing, stylishly directed and impeccably performed by an ensemble of 20 actors. Playwright Tom Morton-Smith takes us confidently yet fluidly through the dizzying trajectory of US physicist J Robert Oppenheimer ( John Heffernan), from professor to head of the Manhattan Project at the secret Los Alamos research complex.
There’s more than enough science to satisfy the boffins, with equations scribbled enthusiastically on blackboards, but Morton-Smith has other angles to examine, not least the emotional toll his work takes on Oppenheimer. Friends, relatives, lovers and dearly held Communist principles all have to be sacrificed to the grinding might of the US military machine and Heffernan, in a towering central performance, takes on an increasingly haunted look as he comes to realise the terrible implications of his achievement.
Director Angus Jackson keeps the scenes fizzing inventively along and there’s strong support from Catherine Steadman as an exlover as unstable as a ton of uranium. Outstanding.