Every Atom Is a Cathedral

By BRAD LEITHAUSER

There's a radiant moment in Tom Stoppard's Hapgood , which opened in revival last week at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, when Kerner, a Russian physicist and spy, celebrates the littleness of atoms. The public, he explains to the woman he loves, simply doesn't comprehend how minuscule the particles truly are. He tells her, "I could put an atom into your hand for every second since the world began, and you would have to squint to see the dot of atoms in your palm." Some men offer their beloved the moon. Kerner offers his a speck in her palm -- a glimpse into the micro-basement of the universe -- and she is enchanted. And the audience is too.

It's also a moment in which an artistic credo seems to be lurking, one that, with Stoppardian paradox, might be rendered as: Who sees littlest sees furthest. Ever since he became internationally famous while still in his 20s for his philosophical farce Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Stoppard has been accused of excessive cleverness -- of having a big mind but a small heart. At bottom Hapgood insists that this division is artificial. As Kerner says, "Every atom is a cathedral."

The KGB believes that Kerner is their agent; the English think he's a double agent working for them. He could be a triple or, as he says, "maybe & quintuple." Like many tales of espionage, Hapgood is an onion-like construction: the author peels back a layer of threats, uncertainties, possible betrayals only to reveal another. It's such an elaborate process, you can almost forget that what you wind up with is an onion: something savory and shapely but rather slight. Which is to say, Hapgood isn't quite Stoppard in highest flight. And which is also to say, even low-flying Stoppard can soar and sweep impressively; he's a rare bird.

The cast is uniformly able. Stockard Channing, as the self-denying British agent Elizabeth Hapgood, does all she can, with her crisp high-heeled pacing, to delimit the boundaries of her role, but there's something a little frustratingly soft -- in the text -- at her center. As played by David Strathairn, Kerner is more convincing as a scientist than as a squelched lover; there's something slightly too predictable -- too projectable, as Kerner the mathematician might say -- about his twitchings and jerkings when sentiment gets the better of him.

The sly, sliding sets enhance a pleasing sense of a world turned slippery at the edges, and certainly much has slipped away geopolitically since the play premiered in London six years ago. Although Stoppard has modified the text slightly to presage the downfall of the Soviet Union, his characters continue to reflect the ironies of flawed vision in the world of surveillance. While the electrons dance, an empire crumbles.