Press Comments on Hapgood
Byron Woods of the Independent Weekly: The surprises kept unfolding in Duke Theater Studies' production of Hapgood, which closed Nov. 21 at Sheafer Theater. Tom Stoppard's homage to the cold war spy thriller has more than enough plot twists to keep an audience permanently off-balance. Indeed, the switchbacks keep on coming in this puzzle palace of a play, well after most audience members have lost all hope keeping track of them.
The far more pleasant surprises I refer to came from examining the program after the show--and learning that acting this good was coming from a student cast.
Where was Mike Dickison's professional credits preceding his accomplishment in the role of Blair, a British spymaster whose deceptively avuncular air suggested a slightly kinder, gentler version of John LeCarre's George Smiley?
Where had we seen Caroline White? Her crisp rendition of junior station chief Hapgood gave the sense of a woman for whom being iced out of an old boy's network could have fatal consequences.
And what of the refreshing Martin Zimmerman, whose tellingly unnamed Russian became tangled in the lines between personal and professional connections in Hapgood's most dangerous game?
Director Jeffery West was clearly at the top of his game, nurturing vibrant characters from a student cast in this meaty British drama. So much so in fact, that the only major demerits one could take, aside from the occasional niggling slip in tech and supporting roles, involves Stoppard's script itself.
In this world of single and double agents (not to mention the triple and quadruple varieties that manifest before the work is done), we're meant to always ask who's turned who--and who's turning which way now.
Hapgood 's plot focuses on proving a number of British agents either loyal or traitor when a briefcase ballet involving a Russian scientist goes awry. But Stoppard unfortunately belabors his overly clever attempts to superimpose the realities of cold war espionage on the world of quantum physics. Things do get lengthy as a result.
Is light a wave or a particle? Is an agent ours or theirs? After the 20th plot turnaround, we're not entirely certain anyone cares anymore. One of the inadvertent lessons from Hapgood is this: Dramatic reversals become a lot less dramatic when they show up in every blessed scene.
The only critique we might offer this production involves trusting--if not the material--then at least the integrity of its own performances just a little more. When the acting's this good, you don't need gimmicks like strobe effects and portentious music cues. What was at center in Hapgood was more than good enough without them.
