Farm Hall

Summer 1945. Hitler is dead. Germany is defeated. The war in the Pacific rages on. In England, six of Germany’s foremost military scientists have been captured by Allied forces and stowed safely in Farm Hall, a stately home nestled in a quiet corner of the Cambridgeshire countryside. Removed from the chaos of war, they while away the hours playing chess, restoring a broken piano, and rehearsing a production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. But the world and the war cannot be shut out forever. The scientists’ tranquil summer is shattered by a shocking revelation, that the unthinkable has occurred, that the Americans have succeeded where they have failed… During their seven-month detainment, unbeknownst to its occupants, almost every inch of Farm Hall was bugged. The scientists’ recorded conversations were translated, transcribed and, finally, in 1992, declassified and published as The Farm Hall Transcripts.

This play is inspired by those transcripts and by true events that occurred at Farm Hall between July 1945 and January 1946. This performance is a script-in-hand rehearsed reading presented by Theatre Royal Bath’s Creative Learning programme.

Ustinov Studio