by Katherine Moar
'It was never about the Reich or the war. It was about physics.'
Summer 1945. Hitler is dead, but the war in the Pacific rages on. When six of Germany's top nuclear scientists – including three Nobel Prize winners – are detained by Allied forces at a stately home in the Cambridgeshire countryside, they find themselves shut off from the outside world. Their only distractions are board games, a broken piano and a copy of Blithe Spirit. But as the months go by, their attention turns to the ongoing war and thoughts of their broken homeland.
The scientists' tranquil summer is shattered by the inconceivable news that the Americans have succeeded where the Germans have failed: the United States has not only built an atomic bomb, but they have used one against Japan.
Katherine Moar's captivating debut play Farm Hall dramatises the true story recorded inside the bugged walls of the actual Farm Hall between July 1945 and January 1946. It was premiered at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in March 2023, before transferring to the Theatre Royal Bath, directed by Stephen Unwin.
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