Hapgood: A Play

With his characteristically brilliant wordplay and extraordinary scope, Tom Stoppard has in Hapgood devised a play that “spins an end-of-the-cold-war tale of intrigue and betrayal, interspersed with explanations of the quixotic behavior of the electron and the puzzling properties of light” (David Richards, The New York Times ) . It falls to Hapgood, an extraordinary British intelligence officer, to try to unravel the mystery of who is passing along top-secret scientific discoveries to the Soviets, but as she does so, the web of personal and professional betrayals―doubles and triples and possibly quadruples―continues to multiply.