Lantern Theater Company presents Tom Stoppard's 'Hapgood'

That’s no small task. In true Stoppardian fashion, the baseline plot – in brief, about deception and double crosses among British and Russian agents at the tail end of the Cold War – serves largely as a vehicle for the author’s cerebral flights of fancy.

Theoretical components in action here include particle physics, rationalist philosophy, the theory of relativity, and mathematical primes. The play contains the makings of a cozy little thriller, but Stoppard doesn’t do that sort of thing; a patina of academic seriousness covers even the lighter moments.

A long sit

If, like me, your eyes start glazing over at the mere mention of electrons or Immanuel Kant, be prepared for a long sit. The play’s facile scholarliness confounds its ability to fully delineate characters, a fatal flaw in a work where we’re expected to believe everyone might be leading a double, triple, or even quadruple life.

Without a certain level of investment in the fate of Elizabeth Hapgood (McKenna Kerrigan), the brilliant mind at the center of this international chess match, or the men who surround her, there’s little left to grasp hold of or care about.

DeLaurier moves the action along briskly, aided by Nick Embree’s impressive turntable set, which makes clever use of St. Stephen’s Theater’s restrictive playing space. No director can fully add a dimension that’s not in the writing, but DeLaurier culls a handful of impressive performances from a top-flight cast.

Damon Bonetti particularly impresses as duplicitous agent Ridley, although his accent occasionally wanders, and Christopher Patrick Mullen nails a very particular style of stiff-upper-lip respectability. Kirk Wendell Brown brings depth to the underwritten role of a no-nonsense American lawman.

The center does not hold

Kerrigan and William Zielinski, as a Russian double-agent and Hapgood’s sometime lover, fare less well. Kerrigan never communicates the edgy charm Hapgood supposedly possesses; her performance remains as drab as the beige suits in which she’s dressed by costumer Natalia de la Torre.

Zielinski also suffers a deficit of charisma, which does little to help the scientifically and linguistically complicated monologues assigned to his character. Together, they never generate the right level of combustible chemistry their doomed romance needs.

The production also lacks a crucial sense of danger. Lighting designer Lily Fossner keeps everything in a high key, even moments that should be played in the suggestive shadows. DeLaurier mostly fails to create a menacing atmosphere, a feeling of people lurking behind corners and listening in.

Spy business seems conducted in broad daylight, as though the characters were merely trading stocks. In taking so much time to ensure the audience understands the story, this Hapgood fails to set the mood.

Even partisans generally regard Hapgood as a minor entry in Stoppard’s wide, diverse corpus, and Lantern’s respectable but drab staging shows why. The playwright expends so much energy reminding the audience how smart he is that he largely forgets to tell a compelling story.