Farm Hall

Photo credit: Farm Hall artwork. (Photo courtesy of production)

Based on the events of Operation Epsilon, a World War to program to detain German scientists associated with Nazi Germany’s nuclear program, the play follows the scientists’ internment at Farm Hall. The play by the same name follows the scientists that lived amongst those walls and explores the moment they find out the atomic bomb has not only been created but has been used.

The play opens in the summer of 1945, in the heavily bugger living room of Farm Hall. It commences with an off stage phone call. Then swiftly moves on to the scientists performing a play in the their living quarters, introducing the play within a play trope. We are shown that these individuals are not instrumental to the catastrophic events that will occur outside of Farm Hall.

Although the play follows the six scientists, it is in equal parts about these individuals as it is about the external world.

Farm Hall is set in two halves. The first half departs from science and focuses largely on lives frivolities, the play (Blithe Spirit), music in the form of an initially broken piano and various board games. At many moments Katherine Moar (playwright) draws us into a static state of Beckettian or Pinteresque boredom reflecting the boredom of the characters.

The slowness and mundanity of the first half mirrors the experience of that characters, as we are often left suspended waiting for action to occur and revelling in pauses and the unsaid. With the knowledge that Farm Hall was heavily bugged and suspected so by the scientists, their candour and apprehension is understandable.

The second act begins with the knowledge that The United Sates of America have built and used the atomic bomb. The scientists unveil with morbid horror the effects of the blast would have on Hiroshima. From here, the conversations spiral into philosophical debates and speculations of intent. The already fractured relationships between the scientists fracture further. Director, Stephen Uniwin presents the characters as bored yet not irritable, there confinement to close quarters doesn't seem to have seeped into the performance.

While the subject matter of the play is prominent, it is juxtaposed by the often frivolous dialogue of the first half. Many of the conversations from these theoretical physicists pivot pointedly around the word 'if'.

All though this is not the first dramatization using the events at Farm Hall, its new interpretation comes at a time when similar pieces have infiltrated the space, such as Operation Mincemeat or in film Oppenheimer.

A special note goes to set designer, Ceci Calf. We are presented with a shabby living room with peeling wallpaper and subdued lighting, as we look closer there are actually 6 different types of wallpaper ripped and torn patchy across the room, mirroring the six characters that have been cobbled together. The low ceiling adds to the confinement and pressure at Farm Hall.

Ben Ormerod, orchestrates subtle lighting from the inside until we see the lighting from the outside revealing the atomic bomb. The lighting works to the advantage of the spotlight among the face of the horror struck scientists at the interval.

Notable Names:

Alan Cox (Heisenberg)

David Yelland (Von Laue)

Julius D’Silva (Diebner)

Archie Backhouse (Bagge)

Daniel Boyd (Weizsacker)

Forbes Masson (Hahn)

Farm Hall Venue:

Theatre Royal Haymarket

Haymarket

London

SW1Y 4HT

Dates: 

from 7th August- 31st August 2024

Farm Hall Running Time:

1 hour and 45 minutes including a 20 minute interval.