Unflagging is a word that you might well use for scientist Carl Djerassi, famed for his pioneering work on the contraceptive pill. The 90-year old Jewish polymath is also a playwright, whose latest work premieres next week at the Kings Head Theatre in London.

Foreplay is billed as “a psycho-sexual thriller of betrayal and revenge,” whose cast of characters includes some of the 20th century’s leading Jewish intellectuals — Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin.