7.6 /10 1 Votes
Written by Tom Stoppard First performance 8 March 1988 Place premiered Aldwych Theatre | 3.8/5 Goodreads Original language English Playwright Tom Stoppard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Characters Hapgood
Blair
Kerner
Ridley
Wates
Merryweather
Maggs
Joe
Russian Date premiered March 8, 1988 (1988-03-08) Subjects Espionage, Quantum mechanics Tom Stoppard plays Night and Day, Indian Ink, Jumpers, The Real Thing, The Invention of Love | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hapgood interview with writer tom stoppard
Hapgood is a play by Tom Stoppard, first produced in 1988. It is mainly about espionage, focusing on a British female spymaster (Hapgood) and her juggling of career and motherhood. The play also makes reference to quantum mechanics, including Niels Bohr's "The answer is the question interrogated"; Heisenberg's uncertainty principle; and the topological problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg.
Contents
Productions
In the original production in 1988, directed by Peter Wood, Felicity Kendal played Hapgood, Nigel Hawthorne played her friend and superior Blair and Roger Rees was their agent, the Soviet scientist Kerner. The production was a critical failure, and it was revised significantly in 1994 for the first New York production.
The play premiered in the US Off-Broadway at the Lincoln Center Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on 11 November 1994 and closed on 26 March 1995. Directed by Jack O'Brien, the cast featured Josef Sommer (Blair), David Strathairn (Kerner) and Stockard Channing (Hapgood). Jack O'Brien won the 1995 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Director.