SOURCE: Rose, Paul Lawrence. “Frayn's Copenhagen Plays Well, at History's Expense.” Chronicle of Higher Education 46, no. 35 (5 May 2000): B4-B6.

In the following review, Rose offers a negative assessment of Copenhagen, arguing that the play distorts historic and scientific truth for the sake of drama and theatricality, thereby undermining the moral significance of the real life events on which the work is based.

Scholars are never satisfied when they see their specialized subjects turn fodder for stage, screen, or novels. The adaptor, like the translator, is by definition something of a traitor to his topic. There are so many pitfalls awaiting the artistic magus. He can get an essential personality wrong, as Peter Shaffer may have done with his hyperactive Mozart in Amadeus, or worse, with his Salieri, whom the playwright slanders as a murderer. Or he may get the facts of a historical situation wrong, as Rolf Hochhuth...