Hapgood: ★★★★ from The Mail on Sunday

Hapgood review
By Georgina Brown, The Mail on Sunday

Stoppard has tweaked it for Howard Davies’s fluent revival. Baffled I remain. But never bored. Indeed, the first half made my brain hurt. It is John le Carré meets Stephen Hawking on a stage with more doors than a French farce.

And while those who actually read A Brief History Of Time might follow the stuff about anti-particles and light bending like water, I’m not sure I’d believe anyone claiming to know if Lisa Dillon’s Hapgood is double-crossing or quadruple-crossing Tim McMullan’s agent Blair, still less if they knew the parcel left in the swimming pool changing-room was picked up by the right guy… or his twin.

Best to submit to the unique Stoppardian experience, be carried long by this clever and theatrically playful spymaster – and savour the wit and wordplay, the muddling of ‘ball room’, ‘ball game’ and ‘ball park’, of ‘blow’, ‘blown’ and ‘blowed’ – and the fact that, in the end, everything makes perfect emotional sense.

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