A compelling drama of chilling relevance

Posted on 20th October 2023

At 8.15 in the morning, on the 6th August 1945, the United States unleashed the terrible power of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Michael Mears’s The Mistake is a complex and involving play that offers a clear-eyed condemnation of the use of weapons of mass destruction, yet does so without resorting to caricature or polemic simplification.

The play switches between two time frames – the evolution of the science that made the bomb possible, and the consequences of the bomb falling on a city with a population of nearly 350,000. The former is represented by Mears, playing a range of historical characters, most notably Leo Szilard, a Hungarian Jew that effectively invented the science needed to create the bomb. Mears does a fine job of portraying Szilard’s impotent frustration (and guilt) over the genie he is unable to put back in the bottle, although tellingly his most affecting portrait is that of Paul Tibbet, the avuncular pilot that flew Enola Gay that day. The devastation wrought by Tibet’s bomb is represented by Nomuea Shigeko, a composite character, sensitively played by Riko Nakazono, whose story is a patchwork of horrific incidents culled from survivor accounts. The creative use of minimal props, but also the striking physical contrast between the two actors, helps delineate the action as it unfolds with a pace and energy that is completely engrossing. Little wonder that they were rewarded by a standing ovation from the audience.

When Mears and Nakazono began touring this play, I can’t imagine they could have foreseen how grimly relevant their performance would be to recent events. After all, deliberately killing civilians in an act of collective punishment would be considered a war crime today, wouldn’t it? The play is a timely warning against a complacent assumption that such acts are consigned to history.