In 2002, the play was adapted as a film by Howard Davies, produced by the BBC and presented on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States.

Having studied memoirs and letters and other historical records of the two physicists, Frayn felt confident in claiming that "The actual words spoken by [the] characters are entirely their own."

There is a great amount known about all of the primary characters presented in Copenhagen; the following includes those bits of information which are directly relevant and referenced in the work itself.

The world that Frayn presents is outside of our conceptions as audience members, simply by virtue of the fact that no one attending the play has ever died.

Because the concepts in physics and politics are at times very complicated or very abstract, Frayn uses several controlling images to better relate certain ideas to his audience.

Bohr had concluded that they would have both drowned had he jumped in to save his son, which presents an idea of futile heroics, particularly with reference to Heisenberg and what should happen if he were to resist Hitler's rule.

The play was originally written in English, but the real people in the exchange may have had the conversation in Danish or German, but even with translation in mind, Frayn defends that the words in the script are those that the characters would actually say.

Understandably, Frayn needs to present the characters in an interesting and dramatic light, as well as depicting a setting that no living person has visited, so the accuracy of such dialogue is subject to dwindle by degrees.

International Productions 1999 – France 2000 – Denmark 2001 – Finland 2002 – Argentina 2003 – Spain 2017 – Italy 2019 – Spain 2022 – Turkey 2023 – Finland TV Movie – 2002 The play was adapted as a television movie in 2002, with Daniel Craig as Heisenberg, Stephen Rea as Niels Bohr, and Francesca Annis as Margrethe Bohr.

The movie substantially cuts down the script of the play, eliminating several recurring themes, and most of the material that established the community of scientists in Copenhagen.

Recent revivals The play has had many productions and revivals, including: Radio – January 2013 Adapted and directed by Emma Harding for BBC Radio 3 starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Werner Heisenberg, Greta Scacchi as Margrethe Bohr and Simon Russell Beale as Niels Bohr.

In the letter, Heisenberg said he had come to Copenhagen to discuss with Bohr his moral objections toward scientists working on nuclear weapons but how he had failed to say that clearly before the conversation came to a halt.

Jungk published an extract from the letter in the Danish edition of the book in 1956 that made it appear as if Heisenberg was claiming to have sabotaged the German bomb project on moral grounds.

On the contrary, I have always been ashamed in the face of the men of 20 July (some of whom were friends of mine), who at that time accomplished truly serious resistance at the cost of their lives.

"[19] Bohr was outraged after reading the extract in his copy of the book, feeling that it was false and that the 1941 meeting had proven to him that Heisenberg was quite happy to produce nuclear weapons for Germany.

[22] Frayn's play, which portrays Powers' theory sympathetically as a possible interpretation of the meeting, brought more attention to what previously had been a primarily scholarly discussion.

[19] In a March 2006 interview Ivan Supek, one of Heisenberg's students and friends, commented that "Copenhagen is a bad play" and that "Frayn mixed up some things".

Weizsäcker tried to persuade Bohr to mediate for peace between Great Britain and Germany and Heisenberg practically completely relied on his political judgement".

[25] In a 2016 assessment by Alex Wellerstein, the nuclear historian asserts that the truth of the Copenhagen meeting is that "we’ll never know, and it probably isn’t that important in the scheme of things".