The Hard Problem

The National Theatre
London SE1

3/5

TOM STOPPARD is undoubtedly the modern dramatist whose work most resembles that of George Bernard Shaw. Like Shaw, his characters are often mouthpieces for his ideas and lack the flesh and blood of dramatic life. 

Yet his best plays compensate for this shortcoming with coruscating wit, pirouetting plot constructions and, of course, the interesting ideas he explores.

In The Hard Problem, Stoppard’s first play for nine years, the ideas are there in profusion. The “hard” problem under forensic examination is that raised by the distinction — if there is one — between the brain and the mind. The subject of inquiry is what exactly human consciousness is.

The play is set in an institute for brain science bankrolled by a multi-millionaire where the young Hilary (Olivia Vinall), about to graduate in psychology, finds herself among the high-flying neuroscientific ground-breakers. 

They’re involved as much in working on predicting the future fluctuations of the financial market — “a belief system with a short memory” — as attempting to discover whether we are anything more than an infinitely complex computerised maze of connected cells bombarded by neurons.

The spirited Hilary zips like a billiard ball between her colleagues, notably her tutor Spike (Damien Molony) — as keen to bed her as to disillusion her beliefs in altruism as being more than a subtle aspect of Darwinian egotism —  and brilliant computer mathematician Amal (Perth Thakerer) who forecasts and lucratively manages the supposedly “self-correcting” market until like human beings, mad or in love, they act “irrationally.”

The back story, with the teenage Hilary’s baby who’s been adopted at birth turning up — a “coincidence” which fulfills her need for a “miracle” — and the validity of statistical analysis in the business of socio-scientific truth-finding, contributes some vibrancy to a drama heavily weighted with dialectic argument.

Bob Crowley’s set, a great electron-charged brain network flashing above the action, complements what is artistic director Nicholas Hytner’s last production before leaving the National. 

This 100-minute chamber play moves with smooth efficiency and holds the audience’s attention throughout. But afterwards I couldn’t help but find myself wondering, as the medieval scholars did, just how many angels can dance on the point of a needle?

Runs until May 27, box office: nationaltheatre.org.uk