Michael Frayn season – review

Crucible, Sheffield

"This is not art, it's mathematics!" complains Simon Wilson's exasperated architect in Michael Frayn's Benefactors, as he struggles to square daylight regulations with the competing interests of underground cabling. In Frayn's own theatrical edifices, however, the mathematical elegance of the artistry is as joyously measured as a Bach fugue. Perhaps the meticulousness of Frayn's construction is partially due to his late entrance to playwriting. From journalism for the Guardian and the Observer in the late 1950s, Frayn extended his scope to novels, television documentaries, philosophy and, at 37, plays. In 1982 he created one of the funniest farces ever, Noises Off (now transferring to London's Novello theatre – please, please, please bring it out on tour).

His next (and ninth) play, Benefactors is as intricately balanced as a quadratic equation. It hinges on the dilemmas facing a liberal architect commissioned to redevelop a run-down area in south London. The dialogue is sharply funny and, under Charlotte Gwinner's direction, punchily rhythmic. It sparks to vivid life the   four characters (stunning performances) clashing over twin crumbling constructs: marriage and urban renewal schemes. Age, though, has blunted any political edge it may have had, and the clever plotting of the second act is less engaging than amusing.

Seeing Copenhagen (written in 1998) directly after Benefactors is like experiencing the shift from the Newtonian to the Einsteinian universe: similar stage elements (past and present woven on threads of interconnecting ideas, for instance) produce such different effects. Set in a sort of purgatory, it reunites three of the characters present at the fateful 1941 meeting in Copenhagen between nuclear scientists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg which either did or did not affect the ability of the Nazis to construct an atom bomb. Barbara Flynn (as Margrethe Bohr), Henry Goodman (Bohr) and Geoffrey Streatfeild (Heisenberg) compellingly and movingly convey ideas of uncertainty and coherence on physical, moral, emotional and scientific levels. Complex as it is, the play might be summed up in one phrase: "By their fruits ye shall know them". These fruits of the Crucible's Frayn season are very delicious indeed.

Contributor

Clare Brennan

The GuardianTramp

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