Farm Hall at Theatre Royal Haymarket
After its critical success in 2023 where it was lauded as “riveting”, Farm Hall has, a year on from that reception, made a brief West End transfer lasting until the end of August.
The original six-strong cast have slipped with ease back into Ceci Calf’s well-crafted formal 1940s costumes, yet the play feels as if it is lacking the thrilling intensity which it was admired for only a year ago.
Katherine Moar’s debut play is, like an initial stage adaptation of the WWII program Operation Epsilon by American playwright Alan Brody, predominantly based on the transcripts made of selected conversations between ten German scientists who were captured and detained as part of the Allied ALSOS Mission.
As in the original Unwin-directed production, no German accents are used meaning, on occasion, audiences have to remind themselves that, while it may appear they are watching English public school-educated fellows in a dilapidated drawing room, they are supposed to be the finest scientific intellectuals who were members of Hitler’s Uranverein.
Fortunately, it doesn’t overtly prohibit an audience from engaging with Moar’s play; but, there are moments where the contrivances of the script seem so apparent that dramatic engagement with the production becomes somewhat diminished.
The light comic touches, for instance, that begin the piece, including a droll attempt to perform Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, wane fairly quickly and seem to serve nothing more than counterbalancing the more serious and engrossing second act which is based on the scientists’ reaction to hearing that America has dropped the atomic bomb.
Upon hearing the BBC broadcast of the Hiroshima attack, we see Hahn (Forbes Masson), unlike the disturbingly objective Weizsäcker (Daniel Boyd), touchingly reduced to tears upon realising the human life wiped out by a weapon influenced by his discovery of nuclear fission. Equally absorbing is the calculatingly shrewd Diebner’s (Julius D’Silva) proposal to the group of how he and his Nazi-employed peers could distance themselves from the destructive discovery were they to be formally imprisoned.
As such, the ethical debate of morality and scientific progress at the core of the second act is undoubtedly the most absorbing aspect of the play.
Overall, though, the play is entertaining and engaging but not unmissable. Indeed, ultimately, it is difficult to shake the feeling that such entertainment and engagement could be as easily obtained from reading Jeremy Bernstein’s insightful Hitler’s Uranium Club as it could from seeing Farm Hall.
Francis Nash
Photos: Alex Brenner
Farm Hall is at Theatre Royal Haymarket until 31st August 2024. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.
Watch the trailer for Farm Hall at Theatre Royal Haymarket here:
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