Review: Oppenheimer

Richard Lutz watches a tour de force looking at the life of the father of the A-bomb

“I feel like I’ve dropped a loaded gun in a playground” says the main character at one point in this RSC production of Oppenheimer at Stratford’s Swan Theatre.

And with that sad phrase, the scientist J Robert Oppenheimer sums up the moral weight placed on his shoulders and lived with for the rest of his life. His team at the Manhattan Project produced the atom bombs that destroyed two Japanese cities and began the nuclear military age. Hundreds of thousands were killed in the twin air drops.

The three hour play by Tom Morton Smith explores the life of this left leaning scientist, fond of a party, fond of the girls, fond of intellectual brio but who, at the same time, was a distant person who shucked most of his past to perfect the splitting of the atom deep in the American desert.

So, there was a personal price and this toll forms the moral crux of this America scientist who was thrust not only into a US army uniform but also into a world where pure science takes second place to the military needs.

John Heffernan plays Oppenheimer as a slightly stooped, shrewd and ultimately self-aware man who knows the deeper he gets into producing an A bomb, the more troubles and divisions he will cause. He turns his back on his left-leaning friends, he adheres to military policy and he gives up a part of his soul to help win the war. He may have been part of the victory. But what he lost of himself is almost incalculable.

There are strong supporting roles from Thomasin Rand as his wife slowly drowning in booze. And able help from James Wilks, Tim McCall and Ben Allen as the scientific colleagues who worked high up in the New Mexico hills to offer up their deadly gift – a gift that was used to kill hundreds of thousands in Japan.

And then there is Oppenheimer himself who at the end of this well-written play fatalistically quotes a Hindu god: “I am become death,” he intones to no-one in particular, “… the destroyer of worlds”. 

Until March 7th. Tickets: 0844 800 1110; rsc.org.uk