Sarasotans behind London debut of play that tells the German side of ‘Oppenheimer’

For more than a decade, producer Ellen Berman and director Andy Sandberg have been working together to broaden the reach of a play that captivated their minds. As they prepare for the play’s London debut, it has taken on new meaning and relevance in the wake of the hit film “Oppenheimer.”

Alan Brody’s “Operation Epsilon” is based on a true story about 10 German scientists who were taken captive near the end of World War II by British and American authorities. The scientists were thought to be working on nuclear weapons for Germany and were apparently unaware of any advances made by American scientists, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer. The play is based on transcripts of their conversations and interviews in captivity.

“This is the other side of the ‘Oppenheimer’ story, what was going on in Germany,” said Sandberg, the artistic director and CEO of the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood who is also a freelance director. “In willful denial of the advances and the consequences, both proceeded, the Germans and the allies, with the idea of doing this for science.”

Berman, a part-time resident of Sarasota and the former president of the Consumer Energy Council of America, backed a 2011 staged reading of Brody’s play at the Historic Asolo Theater at The Ringling, with Sandberg directing. Two years later, he also directed the play’s official premiere at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“In the movie, we see that the Americans are worried about Germany beating us to a bomb, but from the German point of view, they didn’t know anything about what we were doing,” Berman said. “When they’re in Farm Hall in captivity and hear on the BBC radio about the bomb on Hiroshima, they think it’s a hoax. They start wondering how we could have beaten them.”

Sandberg said the film and play are complementary stories. “There is a new generation learning about this as we try to broaden the reach of history. This story is much less known.”

Three Nobel Prize winners were locked up in England in Operation Epsilon, including Werner Heisenberg, Max von Laue and Otto Hahn, who was awarded his prize while he was in captivity for his role in discovering fission in 1939.

Sandberg is working with a large cast of actors who may be familiar from British stage, film and television roles. Hahn is played by Nathaniel Parker, who is most recognized for the title role in “The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.” Simon Chandler, who has extensive film and stage credits, plays Von Laue, and Gyuri Sarossy plays Heisenberg. The cast also includes Jamie Bogyo, who starred in the West /End production of “Moulin Rouge” and a recent revival of “Aspects of Love.” He plays Professor Carl Friderich Von Weizsacker.

Berman said the play reveals that contrary to the Manhattan Project work led by Oppenheimer “where everybody is working together, in Germany, each leading scientist was in his own lab, running their own formulas, not collaborating. If they had collaborated they might have beaten us to the bomb.”

The play, which features a cast of 11 actors, did well in Cambridge and was extended twice following positive reviews, Sandberg said. But various factors have kept it from moving forward until now.

Berman discovered the play in 2008 when she attended the first reading at MIT, where Brody is a professor of theater. Berman is a longtime member of the MIT Council for the Arts.

“I found the play and I wanted to produce it,” she said. “I felt it needed an audience. The ethical issues in the play are so compelling.”

She met Sandberg through a nephew who had been the young director and producer’s roommate at Yale. “And I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could give this young guy his Broadway debut. That was in 2009 and it’s been a great partnership ever since.”

2009 is also the year that Sandberg became the youngest producer to win a Tony Award for his work in bringing a revival of “Hair” to Broadway.

She has raised money from people who have encountered the play over the years and she has found people “who were committed to having this story told.”

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Sandberg said a workshop in New York City in 2010 helped unlock a lot of questions, leading to the reading in Sarasota. “It was a chance for us to explore the fictional aspects of the play more deeply,” Sandberg said of Brody. “He wrote a beautiful play that smartly concocted elements of the transcripts. We wanted to get to the core of why are there 11 people in this place, what do we know the about personal relationships. I had the research. I needed to look at this as a director and not as an academic. We did a lot of rewriting between Sarasota and the world premiere.

The production will be presented at the Elephant, a new stage that opened earlier this year at the Southwark Playhouse in a neighborhood on the south shore of the Thames. The play is scheduled to run through Oct. 21. For more information: operationepsilon.com

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Play that tells German side of ‘Oppenheimer’ gets London premiere