Hapgood: A Play [Paperback]

Tom Stoppard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2008

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tom Stoppard is the author of more than twenty plays, including, most recently, Rock 'n' Roll. He lives in London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; Broadway ed edition (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571198570
• ISBN-13: 978-0571198573
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,420,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Stoppard is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves a Favor, Arcadia, Jumpers, The Real Thing, and The Invention of Love.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beware for the Intellectually Simple, August 20, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Hapgood: A Play (Paperback)

This is probably my favorite play - but a word a warning. It is one of the most complex plays on the market, so watch out. It may require one having to draw out scenes and re-read parts, and even then, it can be confusing at parts. It's about double agents and english/russian spies combined with extremely complex science and physics, so if you like that kind of thing, this book is right up your alley. I also recommend some of Tom Stoppard's other plays: Dirty Linen, The Dog It Was That Died, Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, and Indian Ink. And of course, his classics: Arcadia and Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dea

5.0 out of 5 stars Work of Genius, September 6, 2011

By 

Writer Ed (Gainesville, Fl) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hapgood: A Play (Paperback)

Hapgood is a very dense play, a work of genius, correlating
the British spy system with the mysteries of quantum
mechanics. Great story and gives science info., in the
group of his Arcadia and Fryan's Copenhagen. Terrific
and challenges the audience to THINK!

5.0 out of 5 stars Hapgood's gotten a bad rap, it's really a great play!, June 25, 2011

By 

Frequent Contributor (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Hapgood: A Play (Paperback)

After getting into Tom Stoppard, his evasive play Hapgood struck my interest, and I tracked it down on Amazon to see if it was any good (while a fan of Stoppard, I seem to either love his stuff or become bored to death with it, depending on the subject matter... Arcadia and The Real Thing are some of my other favorites...). First of all, it is good. There's quite a lot of interesting spy things going on, and like Stoppard's The Real Thing, the way scenes are framed can lead (purposefully) to a bit of confusion, which is a good thing in a story with so many double and triple crosses going on...

I should mention my concern regarding this play, in that apparently there is an original "lost" version of the text which was performed to poor reviews, rewritten, and is now only available in this new form (and performed that way, if people still put on productions...). I'm led to believe that the original has a lot more confusing bits about quantum physics, which is part of what piqued my interest in the first place. While this version seems to have lost most of the bits about physics and the nature of reality, there's still a lot of really great spy-speak and three-card-monty-esque briefcase drop-off scenes.

All in all, I highly recommend this play to fans of espionage (If you liked Mamet's Heist, you'll be right at home, here...).

Oh, and I don't know why, but I guess simply based on the title, or whatever, but I assumed Hapgood was a man, which is not the case. Weird how the brain works...