REVIEW: FARM HALL at Jermyn Street Theatre 9 March - 8 April 2023



‘erudite and entertaining theatre’ ★★★★

Hitler’s brightest scientists are holed up in a stately home in Cambridgeshire, 1945. If this sounds like the beginning of a poor joke or far-fetched premise, it’s true. Not only is it little known, real event, the entire seven month episode was bugged. In 1992, the Farm Hall transcripts were declassified and published and this captivating play, the first by historian, Katherine Moar is inspired by these documents.

Directed by Stephen Unwin, an award-winning British theatre and opera director, it might be supposed that ninety minutes of old science speak would be hard work and a little dull. This engaging period piece is anything but. Both a window and earpiece to another time and place, Farm Hall feels both vital and present. It’s a well-paced piece that flies along, fresh as a newly hatched time capsule and drawing you into this strange, sequestered world.

The six clearly defined characters on stage depicts the physicists, Nobel Prize winners and key players of The Uranverein or Uranium Club, the project to research nuclear technology, weaponry and reactors in Nazi Germany. As they languish in elegant captivity, all dressed like David Niven in the charming shabbiness of Farm Hall, they find ways to while away the long hours. They act out Noel Coward’s Blythe Spirit, read random books about toadstools, sing songs around a piano and share the science of how to put bubbles into champagne. Von Laue, dourly played by David Yelland, the only open objector to Nazism in the group carries his countries burden in every regretful grimace. “What’s the point of being in a democratic country if I can’t play Monopoly?”

This collective of brilliant minds assume the British are too bumbling, polite and old-fashioned to do anything crass as listening in, “the Brits don’t understand the real Gestapo methods.” This belief permits frank discussion and candid disclosures. In this suspended period, seven months of detainment, there is ample time to reflect on their motivations in party science and if necessary (for mental survival or ego protection) rewrite their personal narratives. Each scientist has a different political hue, moral position and social background. Weizsäcker comes from a wealthy and well connected family with family connections to Himmler. His younger brother would become Germany’s President between 1984 - 1994) Diebnar played by Julius De Silva is an oafish boor, a Toad of Toad Hall and former Head of Hitler’s Uranium Club. Proudly loyal to his Fürher, he represents the far right faction and is sidelined by most of the others. There is clearly professional competition at play which emerges and subsides and it’s noted on more than one occasion that collaboration is more fruitful than competition.

The light banter of the first half contrasts with the darkening mood of the second when a bombshell is literally dropped. It is while they are at Farm Hall news arrives the Americans have not only successfully built an atomic bomb (where the Germans failed) but have used it against Japan. Knowing what we know now about the scale of this devastating act, it’s stunning to see six men clustered around a radio, who see merely their life’s work go up in flames. It’s difficult for the audience - and perhaps the scientists depicted on stage - to separate the monstrous act from the desire to be ‘first’ or ‘win’. One naively declares, “It was never about the Reich or the war. It was about the physics.” 

The ability to scale down the enormity of war to this human scale and distil such historical complexity into erudite, entertaining theatre is a real achievement. We are thankfully spared any faux Colditz style German accents, the characters all well-rounded and group dynamics well drawn out. The script is spare and playful - there is enough weight in the subject matter. The dialogue offers an accomplished edit and revision of what must have been a long, methodical and creative process of selection, distillation and imagination. Farm Hall is a production that keeps you thinking long after the performers have left the stage and will continue to entrance audiences when it transfers to Theatre Royal Bath.

Photography by Alex Brenner

FARM HALL By Katherine Moar

Jermyn Street Theatre

9 March - 8 April 2023

Box Office https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/farm-hall/#tickets

Cast - ALAN COX, DAVID YELLAND, ARCHIE BACKHOUSE, DANIEL BOYD, JULIUS D’SILVA, FORBES MASSON 

Director – Stephen Unwin

Set and Costume Designer – Ceci Calf

Lighting Designer – Ben Ormerod

Sound Designer – John Leonard

Reviewed by Nilgin Yusuf

An experienced author, lecturer and journalist (ex-Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and ELLE) Nilgin is developing her first full-length stage play, supported by Mrs.C’s Collective and the Arts Council