FARM HALL, a powerful and riveting wartime thriller written by British playwright and historian Katherine Moar, makes its United States premiere with Topanga Actors Company, on Friday, January 10, Promenade Playhouse in West Los Angeles.
Moar’s play dramatizes a lesser-known but fascinating World War II story that still awaits a definitive answer: how close did the Nazis come to developing an atomic bomb? Six renowned German nuclear scientists are captured by Allied forces and held captive in the British manor house known as FARM HALL in the Cambridgeshire countryside. There they spend the months between July 1945 and January 1946 cut off from the world and not realizing that their conversations are being secretly recorded and transcribed. Eighty years later, what do those transcripts actually tell us?
In the spirit of the transcripts themselves, Moar’s drama takes a dramatic turn as “guests” who console themselves with board games, a broken down piano and a copy of Blithe Spirit, must deal with devastating news their American counterparts have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As jealousies emerge, private agendas are revealed, and each scientist must come to grips for themselves with the theoretical weapon they were to create becoming a reality.
FARM HALL premiered at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in March 2023, before transferring to the Theatre Royal Bath, and then landing at West End’s Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in 2024.
This production, directed by Judith Hendra, cofounder of Topanga Actors Company, includes the ensemble cast of Edward Giron as Heisenberg, Andy Spring as von Weizsäcker, Ben Birmingham as Bagge, Patrick Skelton as von Laue, Tom Waters as Hahn, and Mark Irvingsen as Diebner.
FARM HALL will run Friday to Sunday for three consecutive weekends through January 26. Tickets available at: www.onstage411.com/farmhall
For information contact: [email protected]
