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" (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.