Katherine Moar’s modest little debut play, directed by Stephen Unwin, originally premièred at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre. It has now transferred to the West End for a brief run.
The story is inspired by the true events that took place at Farm Hall, a stately home just outside Cambridge, between July 1945 and January 1946. The war had ended in Europe but was still continuing in Japan.
Six of Germany’s leading nuclear scientists—including three Nobel Prize winners—are imprisoned at Farm Hall. Unbeknownst to them, every inch of the building is bugged and their every action is recorded.
Moar, a historian, has had access to the declassified transcripts. The first act establishes the characters of these men, pro- and anti-Nazi supporters, observing their frictions and pastimes. The more interesting and dramatic second act records their reactions to the Americans having successfully built an atomic bomb and then dropping it on Hiroshima.
The play raises moral dilemmas and quandaries which are still very relevant. It also raises questions of culpability. Who is to blame? Where does the buck stop? Had the Nazis not sacked all their Jewish scientists, their nuclear project might well have succeeded sooner. It is disturbing to speculate what would have happened if the Germans had got the bomb first. Which city would they have bombed?
Julius D’Silva is vocally and physically so right for the role of the unrepentant Nazi that he inevitably stands out in a fine ensemble. He has the authority. There are good performances, too, by Alan Cox and Forbes Masson as scientists who feel the guilt and shame of having worked on the nuclear project keenly, knowing full well the horrific devastation it would cause.
I shall be surprised if Katherine Moar’s Farm Hall is not made into a television film.