Hapgood - A Question of Gamesmanship?

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Notes 315 HAPGOOD - A QUESTION OF GAMESMANSHIP? One of the oddities about Stoppard's latest play is the way it has been received. Reviews of the 1988 London production either treated it as a spy thriller, and complained that the story was too intellectual, lacking the realism ofLe Carreor , setting the line for subsequent academic commentary, focussed on its discussion of modem physics, and criticized the use of a cliched genre to illustrate metaphysical themes. Both approaches overlooked the central factor in Hapgood's construction, which would (literally) have been obvious to a child or, more to the point given the normal West End audience, to parents with young families. Perhaps the intellectual sophistication called for by the scientific component seemed to require the putting aside of childish things? Or maybe the conventional lines ofdramatic criticism, the analysis of plot and the themes displayed in dialogue, are simply inappropriate for Stoppard's brand of theatre? It is certainly true that the play evades easy definition, and specifically cultivates the confusion reflected in the reviews about whether it should be read as thriller or philosophical discourse, being set up as a test of perception in which there is no single correct solution. It is designed as an equivalent of the square root of sixteen to which, as the physicist points out, there are "two correct answers. Positive and negative."In terms ofthe action, ofcourse, this is embodied in the permutation of "doubles" and twins, in which one person can be two characters, or vice versa. Stoppard always provides the key to interpretation within each play: the Players' dumb show in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the final open question in Travesties. Here, what the dialogue emphasizes is that "the act ofobserving determines the reality." For the characters that means "you get what you interrogate for," and this applies equally for the audience, as Peter Wood's production emphasized. The settings continually required the spectators to re-evaluate their perception through trompe l' oei!, distortions of scale, or deceptive perspectives. The convincingly three-dimensional building of the boarding school in the background to the rugby-match scenes was a flat cardboard cut-out. The photographer's studio contained an eight foot long toothpaste tube. At the zoo the characters gaze idly thmugh the bars of a cage while talking, but the blank reverse of the notice identifying what is inside indicates that it is the audience who are the animals on show. Yet if all this forces us to question reality, it also refers back to the artifice of the stage, where actors are not the characters they represent and all scenery is fake. In the theatrical context only what is unreal is true, and garne-playing is the most significant activity. Corresponding to this, the apparent subjects of Hapgood are both undermined . The spy plot is overtly created from cliches, pieced together from stock 316 Notes elements of the genre and foregrounding its concepts as jargon. The physicist reads "only .. . spy stories" and points out their artificiality - "they all surprise in the same way ... I don't mind. Ilove the language ... Safe house, sleeper, cover, joe . . ." - while the denouement reveals that the undercover war between opposing intelligence services is a form of co-operation, with the sole purpose of "keeping each other in business" since the Star Wars secret to be guarded or betrayed has no possible practical value. This in tum reduces the apparently serious themes that this plot embodies to irrelevance. Quantum mechanics, particle versus wave theories oflight, Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle are restricted to intellectual games, as in the example of Euler's advanced mathematics being used to solve the puzzle of the Konigsberg bridges, which is explicitly duplicated ("ifnot replicated") in the opening scene of the play. In fact, the whole play is structured on game-playing, using the Kiplingesque image of spying as "the Great Game," but taking the metaphor literally. As Hapgood warns her suspect colleague: "You're street smart and this is a board game. In Paris you bounced around like Tigger, you thought it was Cowboys and Indians." However, simplicity is married with abstraction. This game of betrayal and state secrets is specifically compared to...