Margrethe Bohr in Copenhagen is a grounding force for the two men, her husband Niels and Werner Heisenberg (Niels’s colleague and protegé). A description from MIT of her role in this play says that she functions as a Greek chorus to help the audience understand the physics, but also embodies the feminine skill of identifying the emotional reality underlying the political and scientific arguments. As written by Michael Frayn, the character of Margrethe cuts through the others’ rationalizations to the heart of things.
In the moment shown in this rehearsal video clip, Sue Struve as Margrethe counters Niels’ impulse to downplay and maintain order by sharing her own upsetting memory of a time when Heisenberg published a landmark scientific paper without consulting Niels—in order, as she sees it, to selfishly gain stature for himself in the scientific community.