By Cal
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3sICvgLopE
Available until: 16th October 7pm
Oppenheimer was performed by the Royal Shakespeare
Company in 2015. With just two exceptions (though I think one was involved in
the play at a later stage and the other is the little boy – the four original
actors in the role probably aren’t so little now!), the cast was reunited for a
Zoom reading of the play on 15th October 2020.
I didn’t know much about Robert Oppenheimer before I watched this. I knew what he was famous for. I’ve seen John Adams’ opera Dr Atomic, but I didn’t really engage with it. There were too many people, too much physics and too much politics talk and I really struggled with that.
I’m in a very small minority, but I felt the same way about Oppenheimer.
I didn’t manage to work out who all the characters were, though a number of
roles were doubled, which probably confused me. I couldn’t follow the physics.
I had trouble following quite a lot of the story. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I’m
just not very clever. I’m sure there’s no issue with Tom Morton-Smith’s script,
which is powerful and painful, showing Oppenheimer and the people around him as
human beings (though, at times, that exact description becomes debatable), as
well as scientists.
Although I didn’t understand this play very well, I do think
I felt it. This cast is incredible. I felt the desperation and drive to
complete the project. I felt the sadness. I found the play very sad. I’m
against the concept of the atomic bomb anyway so I felt that sad that it was
constructed, sad that it was seen as necessary… and sad that I can, very
reluctantly, see the necessity. I hate what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I hated the way many of the characters behaved, with little regard for the
people they were supposed to love, as well as for the innocent people who died
in Japan.
It was also sad because of everything the characters lost.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (the incredible John Heffernan) shows so many signs of
being a good guy, very intelligent and articulate but also likeable and fun, but
the more he worked on the bomb, the more of his humanity was lost, partly
because he had to make what he was doing feel okay and partly because it took
him further and further away from people on an emotional level. He does have
affection for the women in his life, even though he doesn’t treat them well. I
feel it’s not impossible that he could have been a good father as initiall, he
did seem quite paternal towards Rossi (Oliver Johnstone, who is full of
enthusiasm as an eighteen year old at the start and broken at the end because
he has lost so much too).
Oppenheimer and many of the men he works with are
intelligent men with so much potential as human beings, but it’s almost like
part of themselves became a casualty of war too. They have achieved something
which is scientifically incredible. But it all feels so hollow.
Thomasin Rand’s Kitty is maybe not completely likeable, but
she’s admirable as it seems like she tries so hard and she obviously has a lot
to put up with. Catherine Steadman plays Jean, one of Oppenheimer’s other
women, and she seems interesting, amusing and intelligent, though her continued
presence in Oppenheimer’s life is something else I found difficult to
understand.
Charlotte Sorber, who looks after the Oppenheimers’
children, provides the play with warmth and humanity which is both very welcome
as is in such short supply and very sad because her presence makes the sadness
of the other characters all the sharper.
I think most people were able to follow the story and the
science and although we miss the late Scott Ambler’s choreography and what
sounds like intriguing direction from Angus Jackson, I’m sure the problem is
with me rather than with Zoom. So I do encourage everyone to watch this before
it disappears. Even if you have trouble with the story too, the acting is of a
very high standard and at times, it’s mesmeric.
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