Richard Rhodes Writes A Play About Reagan, Gorbachev and Nuclear Weapons

September 26, 2012, 4:23 pm

By FELICIA R. LEE

Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 24 books, has written his first play, and it spins off of his research into the history of nuclear weapons. Mr. Rhodes's “Reykjavik,” about the historic 1986 meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in that city, will have a free staged reading on Thursday at 6:30 pm at the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Mr. Rhodes and several other experts in nuclear disarmament will appear at a panel discussion following the reading.

“Reykjavik” is a dramatic reconstruction of the two-day summit during which the world leaders almost reached agreement on the total abolition of their countries' nuclear weapons.The play uses the actual transcripts o f the Reykjavik meeting as well as the memoirs of both Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev. Tony winner Richard Easton will play the former American president and Jay O. Sanders will play his Russian counterpart. Tyler Marchant will direct the reading, which is produced by Primary Stages.

Mr. Rhodes was researching the Reykjavik files for the third of his four volumes of nuclear history, “Arsenals of Folly” (2007) and decided to convert the transcripts into a stage play. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for the first of those volumes, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.”

The panel discussion will open with a video message from Mr. Gorbachev and will feature New York Times journalist Philip Taubman; Max Kampelman, an arms control expert; Roald Sagdeev, a science advisor to Mr. Gorbachev; Morton H. Halperin, an expert on foreign policy and civil liberties; and Mr. Rhodes.

The event is organized by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty Organization (CTBTO), whic h is based in Vienna, Austria. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-serve basis by contacting Atawoba Macheiner at awoba.macheiner@ctbto.org or Pablo Mehlhorn at pablo.mehlhorn@ctbto.org