The science of theatre: Alan Alda’s eureka moment

He may be adored for his portrayal of Hawkeye the wisecracking doctor in MASH, but Alan Alda has a second passion: science. Which is why he has written a play, Radiance, about the hounding of Marie Curie

Alan Alda works from an office in midtown Manhattan, around the corner from Grand Central station and in the shadow of the Chrysler Building. "It's funny," he says, looking up at the skyscraper while waiting for a cab. "I come here every day and I never saw it from this angle before."

The veteran actor, now 79, is used to approaching things from unusual angles - it is what he has been doing, forcefully, for most of his career: taking the lessons learned from one area of expertise and applying them to another. So it is that, having just finished appearing nightly on Broadway, opposite Candice Bergen in Love Letters, Alda now has a production up and running at a much smaller venue: the Tabard in west London.