‘Copenhagen’ Splits Into Two Touring Shows

“Copenhagen,” the Tony Award-winning play about the race to split the atom during World War II, is turning into fissionable material itself: Next week, the number of touring productions in Southern California will proliferate from one to two.

The main national company, featuring Len Cariou and Mariette Hartley, plays through Jan. 6 at the Wilshire Theatre, the first stop on a tour of major cities.

Meanwhile, previews begin Tuesday at the Laguna Playhouse for a second “Copenhagen,” this one with lesser-known Broadway actors. They will go on the road after the Laguna run, bringing Michael Frayn’s acclaimed play to smaller markets on the East Coast and the Midwest before ending in late April at the Spreckels Theatre in San Diego.

Blockbuster musicals like “Rent” sometimes have multiple touring companies. But for a drama, the two-company treatment happens very rarely, said Aldo Scrofani, executive vice president of Columbia Artists Theatricals, which is booking and managing both “Copenhagen” tours.

Scrofani said that university theaters and performing arts centers not on the main tour’s itinerary were clamoring for “Copenhagen,” which probes the scientific issues, the interpersonal dynamics and historical repercussions of one of the war’s enigmas: the 1941 visit by Werner Heisenberg, head of Nazi Germany’s nuclear research program, to his half-Jewish Danish mentor and fellow Nobel laureate in physics, Niels Bohr. Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, is the only other character in the play.

During the 2000-2001 theater season, Columbia Artists Theatricals teamed with the Laguna Playhouse for a national tour of “The Belle of Amherst,” in which Julie Harris revived her landmark solo turn as poet Emily Dickinson. That match was made by Don Gregory, a Newport Beach-based Broadway producer who had mounted the original “Belle” with Harris 25 years before.

Pleased with the “Belle” tour, Scrofani called Laguna in October with his proposal to launch a second “Copenhagen” tour. Starting the show in Laguna gives it a five-week shake-down free from typical pressures, thanks to the nonprofit playhouse’s large subscription audience, Scrofani said.

The “Copenhagen” tour, like “The Belle of Amherst,” will be considered a Laguna Playhouse production; audiences will see a set and costumes created by Laguna’s artisans, and a stage manager and technical director from the playhouse will oversee the tour.

Auditions were underway for the playhouse’s previously announced January show, “The Waverly Gallery,” when Frayn’s play fell in its lap. “Waverly,” a humorous drama about a vibrant art dealer suffering the ravages of old age, had cachet. It was to be the West Coast premiere of the show by Kenneth Lonergan, a playwright-screenwriter whose works also are being mounted this season by South Coast Repertory and the Pasadena Playhouse. But Richard Stein, the Laguna Playhouse’s executive director, said that the chance to bring the high-profile “Copenhagen” to Orange County was too good to pass up.

Some theatergoers in Orange County will already have seen “Copenhagen” in Los Angeles, but Stein thinks the L.A. run and its attendant publicity and word of mouth should help ticket sales in Laguna. Playhouse subscribers who have seen “Copenhagen” and don’t want to see it again can exchange their tickets for another show or get refunds.

The staging in Laguna will be a little different, Stein said. It will not have a raked--sloped--stage, as do the Broadway production and the main national tour; nor will some audience members be seated on stage. In the original design, part of the audience occupies seats above and behind the action.

Stein said the sloped stage and the onstage seating would be too difficult to set up and pack away quickly for the one- and two-night stands that make up most of the smaller “Copenhagen” tour. The cast will be made up of William Cain as Niels Bohr, Sean Arbuckle as Werner Heisenberg and Tanny McDonald as Margrethe Bohr. Cain appeared in “Wit” on Broadway; McDonald was seen locally in a touring production of “Man of La Mancha” in 1991; Arbuckle is a member of Actors Company in New York City.

The playhouse will “make a little bit of money” from the tour, Stein said. It also gets the theater’s name in circulation.

“A lot of our ability to secure the rights to hot new properties is based on our reputation for doing quality work and having the [playwrights’] agents know about us,” Stein said. “When I mention the fact that we’re doing [‘Copenhagen’], it definitely makes an impact. Now they’ve begun to hear of Laguna Beach.”

“Copenhagen,” Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m., Saturdays 2 and 8 p.m., Sundays 2 and 7 p.m. Previews Tuesday through Friday, 8 p.m.; Thursday, 2 p.m. Regular performances begin next Saturday. Ends Feb. 3. $25 to $49. (949) 497-2787.