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.