OPPENHEIMER
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Opened 22 January, 2015
***

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a complex cove. A serial womaniser, he nevertheless remained detached to the point of offering his and his wife’s baby for adoption by one of his lovers. A convinced socialist, he dropped all his active interest in left-wing ideology as soon as he was accepted for the Manhattan Project of designing and building an atomic bomb; yet he continued to attempt to defend numerous friends and colleagues with similar views, some of whom he had converted himself.
    
Above all, Tom Morton-Smith’s play vigorously rebuts the prevalent image of Oppenheimer as tortured with guilt for having brought such a horrifically destructive force into the world. Yes, his famous quotation from the Bhagavad Gita – “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” – ends the play, and it is clear that he felt disgust with himself and possibly a kind of regret, but not a shred of repentance. As with his communism, Oppenheimer was clear and wholehearted in his pragmatic acceptance that developing the A-bomb was necessary to forestall the Nazis and defeat fascism, and then likewise with the Japanese. Nor was the mere threat sufficient: he is shown arguing that “It has to be used, and used on people” to make the point. Compared to all these contradictions, dramatising the actual nuclear physics is a doddle.
    
Angus Jackson’s RSC production faces all these difficulties head-on and generally negotiates a way through them, but he and his cast cannot overcome the sheer volume of material presented. Catherine Steadman is compelling as Oppenheimer’s sometime lover Jean Tatlock, and Ben Allen as Edward Teller, alternating arguments with Oppenheimer about proceeding straight to the development of a hydrogen bomb with piano performances from Beethoven to boogie-woogie. However, John Heffernan in the title role has a raw deal. However heroically he deals with all the barrowloads of biography and science, he has only the occasional opportunity to give an emotionally animated performance; Oppenheimer’s default setting is cold-fish. Hedydd Dylan as his wife Jackie is even more unfortunate: whenever she leaves off using contractions in her speech, you can tell that Morton-Smith is moving into a passage of undigested rhetoric. It’s a noble experiment, but like the bomb itself it doesn’t set the atmosphere alight.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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