Farm Hall at Cambridge Arts Theatre September 2023
By Katherine Moar | Directed by Stephen Unwin
Katherine Moar’s powerful new play, Farm Hall, comes to Cambridge’s Arts Theatre as part of a limited 2023 UK tour. This play is inspired by the true events that took place in Cambridgeshire, at Farm Hall in Godmanchester, between July 1945 and January 1946.
The war in the Pacific rages on. When six of Germany’s top nuclear scientists – including three Nobel Prize winners – are detained by the Allied forces at Farm Hall, a country house in the Cambridge countryside, they find themselves shut off from the outside world. Their entertainment? Some redacted newspaper, a broken piano and a copy of Noel Coward’s 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, that the United States has not only built an atomic bomb, but has used one against Japan…
Unbeknownst to the scientists, during their stay, every inch of Farm Hall was bugged and their every action recorded.
Farm Hall received its first rehearsed reading at the Ustinov Studio, Bath in September 2019. The world premiere production was staged at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London in March and April 2023 before touring to Bath in April 2023.
Director Stephen Unwin was previously Artistic Director of English Touring Theatre and the Rose Theatre, Kingston. This production comes from London’s award-winning Jermyn Street Theatre
