The Tony Award — winning play that soars at the intersection of science and art, Copenhagen is an explosive re-imagining of the mysterious wartime meeting between two Nobel laureates to discuss the atomic bomb. In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a clandestine trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart and friend Niels Bohr. Their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle had revolutionized atomic physics. But now the world had changed and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. Why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen and what he wanted to say to Bohr are questions that have vexed historians ever since. In Michael Frayn’s ambitious, fiercely intelligent, and daring new play Heisenberg and Bohr meet once again to discuss the intricacies of physics and to ponder the metaphysical — the very essence of human motivation

The great master of farce turns to an exclusive island retreat for a comedy of mislaid identities, unruly passions, and demented, delicious disorder On the private Greek island of Skios, the high-paying guests of a world-renowned foundation prepare for the annual keynote address, to be given this year by Dr. Norman Wilfred, an eminent authority on the scientific organization of science. He turns out to be surprisingly youthful, handsome, and charming — quite unlike his reputation as dry and intimidating. Everyone is soon eating out of his hands. So, even sooner, is Nikki, the foundation's attractive and efficient organizer. Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, Nikki's old friend Georgie has rashly agreed to spend a furtive horizontal weekend with a notorious schemer, who has characteristically failed to turn up. Trapped there with her instead is a pompous, balding individual called Dr. Norman Wilfred, who has lost his whereabouts, his luggage, his temper, and increasingly all sense of reality — indeed, everything he possesses other than the text of a well-traveled lecture on the scientific organization of science. In a spiraling farce about upright academics, gilded captains of industry, ambitious climbers, and dotty philanthropists, Michael Frayn, the farceur "by whom all others must be measured" (CurtainUp), tells a story of personal and professional disintegration, probing his eternal theme of how we know what we know even as he delivers us to the outer limits of hilarity

"A man sits in his car at the traffic-lights, waiting for them to go green." This may sound like a calm opening to a novel, but readers can be absolutely assured that the minute this man's distracted foot hits the accelerator, they will be off on a voyage of such imagination, a trip of such tart hilarity, a solipsistic sojourn of such universality that they will not draw breath until the man, Howard Baker, returns, so to speak, to earth at journey's end. Howard finds himself checking into a great metropolis at the nerve center of the universe, where anything is possible. He can do anything he likes, from expressing himself in any language — and being understood — to flying and changing his age at will. It is a city of vast enjoyment, but one which also presents a real moral and intellectual challenge, and offers deeply satisfying possibilities for self-development and self-realization. In short, it is a city which is highly adapted to the requirements of a modest, responsible, likable, educated man of liberal views and genuine social concern called Howard Baker. It is the best holiday he has ever had, and it may turn out to be just he kind of place the reader is looking for himself. After all, who among us has not tried to order the universe in his mind, right up to and including our very own God? Thanks to Michael Frayn's immeasurable powers of imagination, Howard Baker gets a chance that will be a landmark in celestial satire. Relax and let Frayn-Baker be your Virgil to a world wildly conceived yet devastatingly recognizable — splendid, human, silly, and sad, where everyone will laugh at your jokes and your dress is always perfect and yet man's shoelaces turn out to be tied together after all