It’s obvious from the size of its production budgets relative to the size of its audiences that Remy Bumppo Productions was not conceived for financial gain. But over the last four seasons, James Bohnen’s classy — if absurdly named — little theater company has provided opportunities for Chicago’s better Equity actors to get their teeth around meaty roles under intelligent direction.
Remy Bumppo has always been very competent. But the troupe has not always presented a compelling conceptual reason for reviving the scripts it chooses — beyond the palpable desire of the actors to play the parts they always wanted to play and for Bohnen to direct the scripts he always wanted to direct.
But with this exciting, smart and superbly cast production of Tom Stoppard’s “Hapgood,” Remy Bumppo finally has come up with a show that deserves to pack the house at the Victory Gardens. This production is fresh, vibrant, nicely irreverent, and, most important, intensely passionate.
It helps that Remy Bumppo picked an excellent play insufficiently exposed in Chicago.
The last production, almost a decade ago, was directed by Mary Zimmerman at the now-defunct Center Theater.
Penned by the master of formative theatrical experimentation, “Hapgood” is more accessible than, say, Stoppard’s “Arcadia” because it plays its tricks and makes its points in the guise of a prismatic thriller set in the world of international espionage.
But it’s still a piece of great intellectual weight.
In essence, the play explores the theories of quantum mechanics (Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle, the dual nature of light) by creating an elaborate metaphor that involves double agents and Cold War intrigue.
As the plot progresses we watch an elaborate game of chess involving the British, Soviet and American intelligence forces. And since the play is set in 1998, just before one whole house of cards collapsed, it easily makes the point that the intelligence agencies served mainly to keep each other in business.
Like the equally stimulating Buckminster Fuller show at the Mercury Theatre, “Hapgood” probes the intersection of science and the humanities. And as he did with “Arcadia,” Stoppard ultimately borrows from E. M. Forster and argues that both are muddles that confound rather than explain.
With the help of a remarkably imaginative and effective set from Tim Morrison and a whimsical “Goldfinger”-esque sound design from Lindsay Jones, Bohnen offers a light and well-paced concept. And the witty physical antics provide a useful contrast to the intellectual heft of the script.
Annabel Amour is superbly cast in the lead role of Mrs. Hapgood, an intensely complex and dualistic character who runs the intelligence service but is also the object of its investigations. As a sad spy struggling to hold on to the old order of things, Joe Van Slyke is equally terrific. David Darlow looks intensely pained as a Stoppardian scientist named Kenner, while Nick Sandys gives the piece its wacky energy as a double agent (maybe) operating with the help of a twin (or maybe there are more than one set of doubles).
Alternately wise and witty, savvy and sardonic, “Hapgood” is a terrific show offering as much for an audience as for those involved. And that’s precisely the right direction for Remy Bumppo.
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“Hapgood”
When: Through April 1
Where: Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: 773-871-3000
