In 1970, the budding English writer Michael Frayn was watching his marriage-themed play The Two of Us, written for two actors, on the stage
behind. Because there were five roles in the play, the actors went through the doors every now and then and changed with the help of the stage manager
on another person’s clothes.

   

The events behind the stage were much more interesting to Frayn than on stage. Frayn decided to try to write a comedy
topic.

   

Watching a farce is a light activity, but it took Frayn ten years to write it. In the final version, the same
The play will be seen in three versions, which are becoming more and more chaotic.

   

“When the play was completed

, I didn’t think anyone would want to perform or see it. The second act goes almost entirely behind the scenes without any lines.
What actor would agree to that?” Frayn, who is visiting Helsinki, asks.

   

Disbelief also plagued Frayn after he wrote a play about the mysterious meeting of two nuclear physicists, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in occupied Copenhagen in 1941. “I thought I had written that just for fun.”

   

That was not the case. Both Copenhagen and the farce Noises Off – which goes by a pretty stupid name at the Helsinki City Theatre
Hinges and sardines – have been presented and are presented all over the world. The popularity of the farce is not surprising, but it is rare
is to create a play about quantum mechanics and atoms, which is constantly sold out at the Helsinki City Theatre, for example.

   

Frayn, 69, studied

He studied physics and philosophy at Cambridge, but he says that he is a layman in technical matters. Frayn became interested in the topic
after reading Thomas Powers ‘ book Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb, in which Powers tries to figure out why Germany didn’t get the war
nuclear weapons.

   

In the Copenhagen play, the production of the bomb comes to a halt because Heisenberg did not know how to solve the critical mass of the atomic bomb,
but calculated the U235 isotope of uranium needed for the explosion completely wrong. “Although the evidence is contradictory, I
I don’t think he would have been able to make an atomic bomb,” Michael Frayn says.

   

The mystery remains

why a German physicist working for the Nazis wanted to meet a Danish Jewish scientist in the middle of Copenhagen
war.

   

“I believe that Heisenberg hinted to Bohr about Germany’s nuclear weapons program on purpose. It is possible that he wanted not to
nuclear weapons would be manufactured elsewhere than in Germany,” Frayn says.

   

Bohr himself was eventually involved in making the bomb for the Americans, with well-known consequences.

   

Last winter

The director of the Niels Bohr archive reported on a letter from Heisenberg to Bohr in which Heisenberg suspects that Germany will win
war with the help of nuclear weapons. The letter gives a more pro-Nazi image of Heisenberg.

   

Would Copenhagen be different if the information about the letter had become public before the play was written? “Not otherwise, but I would have
made Bohr’s attitude towards Heisenberg a little angrier. Now he only remembers the details of the meeting when Heisenberg
reminds me of them.”

   

Frayn knows that next year, letters that Heisenberg wrote to his family will be published in Germany, for example in 1941.

   

Michael Frayn’s

of the extensive novel production, one has been published in Finnish, Päistikkaa, and next spring Tammi will publish another, his most recent
Spies (Spies).

   

Päistikkaa is a satirical novel about the art world and the flexibility of morality in the face of temptation. Philosopher Martin Clay recognizes
to his astonishment, the painting hanging in his neighbors’ homes to the missing Brueghel.

   

Frayn rarely remembers the inspiration for her books, but she remembers for a second the moment when Päistikkaa was born.
The writer was in the famous Brueghel room of the Museum of Art History in Vienna. Not for the first time, but for the first time
he read a plaque on the walls: Hunters in the Snow (1565) is one of Brueghel’s six works depicting the seasons
series, one of which is missing.

   

“Missing? If it is still there, where is it? Probably not hidden in the warehouses of museums, but in the home of some blissful private home
on the wall, protected by the blissful ignorance of the owners.”

   

Frayn discussed the matter with art experts, and she found out that works that were thought to be lost are found all the time.
The residents of old country manors need money, for example, for the studies of their descendants and invite an expert to assess
paintings on the walls for centuries. “They often turn out to be modest. But then there are cases where an expert
is already leaving and sees some irreplaceable work on the wall when he goes to the bathroom.”

   

What does a person do in such a situation? He goes and says that you have Brueghel hanging in the bathroom? Or is there a temptation
hide the information and try to buy the painting secretly?

   

“My expert said that he would always answer if he was asked directly if he was Brueghel, for example. But if a person doesn’t know how to
You have to remember that brokers are also businessmen.”

   

The situation may be tempting to earn not only money but also fame in the art world, as Päistikkaa illustrates.

   

In the novel Päistikkaa,

it’s also about Martin Clay seeing what he sees, because he’s conditioned to look at reality in a certain way.
“Our perception is never pure, but it is regulated by presuppositions from different sides.”

   

In Spies, this is concretized in the lives of two young boys during the war. The protagonist, who is about ten years old, is convinced that
The mother of the neighbor’s son is a German spy. The boy finds plenty of evidence for this. Of course, an adult reader will not
faith, but easily identifies with the boys’ thoughts.

   

In the form of a novel, Frayn thinks it is natural to describe what is going through the characters’ heads. “In the play, on the other hand, this is
almost impossible. The character can tell us how he feels, but we still have to decide whether we believe him
or not. This is what Copenhagen is largely based on: does the viewer believe Heisenberg or not?”

   

The novel also allows and favors wandering away from the main line of the story, because it is good for the reader to be able to think about things from a distance.
from the head. In a play, this is impossible.

   

It’s hard to believe

that Frayn, who was successful with her plays, was a long-time sworn hater of the theater. He says bluntly that the reason was the student group
A play made in Cambridge that flopped badly. “In retaliation, I wrote columns in the Guardian for years slandering theatre
and the Observer.”

   

Frayn has recently completed a new play that deals with – on all possible topics – German politics
In the 1970s. Frayn refuses to give details about it, but because she suspects that no one wants to perform the play,
It will undoubtedly be a success.