Nuclear physics does seem a bit impenetrable sometimes (!!), but this will have you totally absorbed and on the edge of your seat! Some stunning performances from an excellent cast, led by the wonderful John Heffernan.
Tom Morton-Smith's new play Oppenheimer explores physicist Robert Oppenheimer's scientific leadership of the Manhattan Project, which secretly developed the nuclear weapons that were dropped on Japan in August 1945.
I am so enjoying going to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, now we live down the road in the Cotswolds! Something which was not easy from London...First "The Shoemakers' Holiday", and now this amazing play!
My own brush with nuclear physics came about when I met the CERN Atlas Project physicist Lily Asquith, and this resulted in a new piece for cello and piano entitled Towards 5-Sigma
WATCH THE OPPENHEIMER TRAILER HERE
SYNOPSIS (NO SPOILERS - YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN THE END...)
1939: fascism spreads across Europe, Franco marches on Barcelona and two German chemists discover the processes of atomic fission. In Berkeley, California, theoretical physicists recognise the horrendous potential of this new science: a weapon that draws its power from the very building blocks of the universe. The ambitious and charismatic J Robert Oppenheimer finds himself uniquely placed to spearhead the largest scientific undertaking in all of human history.
Struggling to cast off his radical past and thrust into a position of power and authority, Oppenheimer races to win the 'battle of the laboratories' and create a weapon so devastating that, with the detonation of a single device, it would bring about an end not just to the Second World War but to all war.
As the political situation darkens, Tom Morton-Smith's new play takes us into the heart of the Manhattan Project and explores the tension between the scientific advances that will shape our understanding of the fabric of the universe, and the justification of their use during wartime, revealing the personal cost of making history.
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