Tom Morton-Smith's 'Oppenheimer' at the RSC

Without doubt this is the best original play that I have seen for years and because of that I've moved away from my specialism focusing on adaptations to review this powerful new piece. Oppenheimer is the latest offering from the young playwright, Tom Morton-Smith, and it's the first of his plays that I've seen but it definitely won't be the last! The play details the build up to the crucial moment where the secret to the atomic bomb is discovered, thereby drawing World War Two to an end. Rather than praising Oppenheimer as a genius hero or branding him as a murderer, Morton-Smith examines the inner conflict which Oppenheimer undoubtedly felt at inventing the atomic bomb. The battle that Oppenheimer must have felt within, knowing that the release of the bomb meant the destruction of Hiroshima and the loss of 66,000 lives, not to mention thousands of casualties, but also the saving of millions of lives with the quick conclusion of the War is dealt with poignantly, philosophically and humanistically. Oppenheimer’s private life is also examined, his relationships with women, his wife, his brother and colleagues are also treated to the same scrutiny that Morton-Smith pays to Oppenheimer’s contribution to the world. He presents a troubled man, who very frequently makes all the wrong decisions, a man who is often NOT a good man (the relationship  presented between Oppenheimer and his wife reveals shocking double standards), a man who is also keen not to be labelled as a hero because he knows that on the other side of the world he is considered a mass murderer and that he is the father of all the other weapons of mass destruction to come. The overwhelming guilt and turmoil that Oppenheimer is struggling with does not affect the pacing of the play, which hurls the action at the audience in much the same way that the bomb was hurled on Japan. Each moment of the immediate years running up to Hiroshima is charted in the same whirligig way. It's very physical, fast, thrusting theatre whilst at once providing a lot of very in depth science. A scene opens with a swinging jazz party celebrating various communist charity efforts but the next second, the majority of the guests have evaporated leaving Oppenheimer and his colleagues furiously chalking equations and explaining the atom out loud with its protons and electrons. The director, Angus Jackson, brings to life Morton-Smith’s play with his often animalistic view of humanity. The scene immediately following the test of the first atomic bomb is redolent of William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies (1954), displaying man at his most uncivilised and savage, and highlights the barbarism and brutality of war, on both sides.

In the last few months, we’ve seen two other world renown scientists, Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking, being glamorised by the transference of the life stories to Art. And whilst Alan Turing’s story is, in a way, very similar to Oppenheimer’s (i.e., the mathematical calculation of lives), somehow the play Oppenheimer does not seem as glamorous as the film ‘The Imitation Game’. Both scientists went on to live very short, troubled lives so there's no happy ending in either story so the difference in the levels of glamour must be due to the impact of cinema as a storytelling medium. Seeing Benedict Cumberbatch’s perfectly proportioned, aquiline face 10 foot wide and so many more feet away from you instantly sets up a barrier and this barrier separates the viewer from the story. Theatre, and this is particularly  the case with the thrust stage design of The Swan Theatre, breaks down those boundaries, the fourth wall is removed and you are immersed in the story as it unravels because the living, breathing specimens are in front of you, tangible and so very near.

The reviews are all very praiseworthy and rightly so. Check out The Guardian’s short review:

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/01/oppenheimer-rsc-stratford-observer-review 

John Heffernan’s “angular” features definitely give him the look of a scientist and as  Oppenheimer he is fantastic. He is every inch the stereotyped scientist; pale and lanky, but he takes your breath away when he shows ‘Oppie’ being overtaken with emotion. The Telegraph’s review of his performance whilst brief is appropriately laudatory:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/11365213/Oppenheimer-RSC-Swan-Stratford-upon-Avon-review-a-dazzling-spectacle.html

Heffernan gives a cataclysmic performance, and like Morton-Smith, is bound for further success.
This is the most exhilarating, thought provoking play to have appeared in the last ten years. I urge you to see it. Now.