Tom Stoppard’s “Hapgood” is a puzzle box that may not have a key, a tricky, sometimes opaque morality play about duality, identity, paranoia and uncertainty. It’s most easily described as a Cold War thriller, but it’s also a somber character study and a dry comedy of manners, and its plot relies heavily on the ins and outs of quantum physics. Consider it a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

The acclaimed and oft-analyzed show, set in London in the 1980s, opens at the Spokane Civic Theatre this weekend. Director Jamie Flanery says “Hapgood” features some deceptively difficult set pieces – its wordless opening scene involves complex choreography between spies discreetly handing off information – and he received some directorial assistance from the Civic’s departing artistic director Keith Dixon.

 

Preview by Nathan Weinbender, Spokesman-Review.

Read the rest of the preview online.

Photo by Colin Mulvany, Spokesman-Review.