Word: stoppard
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...Stoppard, J.P. Stanley and Edward Albee...
...awareness. He believes that comedy is the "highest expression of truth" and, conversely, that the funniest things are frequently the truest. This makes for considerable humor arising from grim situations. Moreover, Parent's wanderlust means a frequent change of scenery and a liberating sense that, as the playwright Tom Stoppard put it, every exit is an entrance somewhere else...
Although deeply personal, this work invites comparisons: with Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, Michael Frayn's Benefactors and, above all, David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, which is more animated and bitter in its glimpse of the film business but not as involving. Like Stoppard and Frayn but unlike Mamet, Williamson has the daring to write about artists who are actually artistic -- sincere and good at what they do. His fable ends ambiguously for all parties, but with a whiff of genuine tragedy. -- W.A.H...
...problem, as always with Stoppard, is plot. Hapgood is either too much a thriller narrative -- replete with an elaborate opening chase sequence that deliberately recalls bedroom farce in its slamming of doors and dropping of trousers -- or not enough of one to offer any real surprises. Stoppard radiates ambivalence about the genre he has chosen. Again, as with Shaffer, redemption comes from the marvelous acting of Felicity Kendal as an intelligence agent painfully aware of her shortcomings as a mother, Nigel Hawthorne as a wise colleague and, above all, Roger Rees as the defector, who is also the secret father...
...must- see new musicals this year, but the London theater season does boast provocative plays by Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard...