The Hard Problem
Tom Stoppard
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| Dan Clegg as Spike & Brenda Meaney as Hilary |
When a baby is born, does the human come into the world
ready to put the welfare of others ahead of self; or is the infant already geared
up to look out for self above all else?
Is the consciousness that the baby-turned-toddler-turned-child
eventually acquires a result of its more objective, computer-like brain, or does
that sense of self and unique awareness of the world around the child emanate
from some other source? And to
complicate matters more, does a higher being (e.g., God) have a hand in any of
this?
Questions like these have been asked all the way back to
Aristotle and Plato and have intrigued and plagued scientists, philosophers,
and scholars of religion ever since.
Determining the origin as well as the whys and wherefores of the human
consciousness has been tagged “the hard problem.” The prolific and famed playwright Tom Stoppard
has jumped wholeheartedly into this age-old debate in his latest play by the
same name. The Hard Problem is a heady, wordy one hundred minutes that is
populated not only with lots of facts, theories, and deep explanations but also
with plenty of humor, romance, mystery, and surprises.
As presented by The American Conservatory Theatre and
directed by Artistic Director Carey Perloff, Stoppard’s play is never slow or
boring even with all its big words and rattling off of facts and figures. Its characters are universally interesting and
fascinating, and there is plenty of fodder provided for further questioning and
discussion long after the last bow.
Through the characters he introduces, Tom Stoppard cleverly
presents at least three possible ways of approaching “the hard problem.” By placing the story in Great Britain, he
also is able to construct word-filled arguments and individual stories with the
sorted rhythms, variations of tones and pitches, and even different instrument
sounds that the various British as well as Indian and Chinese accents
afford. The result is a musical
cacophony of voices that at times wonderfully clash and at other times blend
into collegial, friendship, and/or romantic harmony of differing perspectives
and backgrounds.
Like a blaring trumpet, Dan Clegg as the handsome, cocky,
but easily likeable Spike represents the position that consciousness has
developed through evolution and is part of the survival of the fittest, being a
by-product of the brain’s developing complexity through the millennia. He is relentless and loud in his position and
particularly disdains with outward cynicism any idea that there might be a God
that intervenes into the natural order of things as established by Darwin. Mr. Clegg is a mixture of serious, silly, and
sexy in his efforts to convince others of his firm belief system, sometimes
pulling out a cockney accent that sits in juxtaposition against his regular,
fast-clip British tongue of the modern thirty-something, fast-paced Londoner.
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| Brenda Meaney (Hilary) & Vandit Bhatt (Amahl) |
Pounding like a big bass drum is Amahl (Vanditt Bhatt) who
charges into any scene with full voice and with the fury of a pit bull dog. With angry-sounding vigor, he purports the
idea that the brain is simply a beautiful computer and that human consciousness
is somehow just the result of all the brain’s billions of electrical charges
and connections. He too has a big ego
surrounding his bombastic blasts of opinions, including the idea that computers
themselves are actually evolving to be much superior in every way to the human
brain. Mr. Bhatt, for all his blustery
ways, provides one of the evening’s biggest guffaws when he flat out faints
over a funny encounter with a man he tries too hard to impress.
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| Brenda Meaney |
Not buying either the evolution theory of her lover Spike or
the brain-as-computer theory of her job-seeking competitor, Amahl, is the
quieter but equally intense Hilary. She
is a kind of woodwind voice that eases in with steady reasoning but also with
nuanced tones that never dominate but that in the end, stand out with a unique
delivery and message. Brenda Meaney
plays with great depth and skilled subtlety this principal protagonist of
Stoppard’s story. Hilary wants a job at
the prestigious Krohl Institute for Brain Science and wins it over the brainy,
aggressive Amahl by pointing out to the hiring manager (Anthony Fusco as Leo)
that although computers may be able to think and to play brilliant chess, they
do not have the consciousness to care if they win or lose (as do humans). Hilary gets the job and begins a multi-year
journey to find a way to prove that humans are more than what the neurons of
the brain produce.
And as he weaves the back-and-forths of these three opinions
throughout the overall story of Hilary, Spike, and Amahl as well as of their
colleagues, lovers, and bosses, Tom Stoppard explicitly leaves audience members
to draw their own conclusions about ‘the hard problem.’ However, he does implicitly tip his hand
through his treatment of Hilary. To her,
he awards the biggest dose of altruism -- of believing humans at the core are
here to help others. He does so by
giving her humility, grace, and dignity to complement her fervent drive and evident
smarts. Through her demonstrated, deep
integrity, he submits her as one who is more than willing to sacrifice herself in
order to save a cherished colleague's career and to show little-to-no regret in doing so. He also does nothing to ridicule the fact that
she nightly kneels in prayer before going to bed (even right after making love
with her non-believing lover), and he does not let us forget that she sincerely
believes that maybe there are coincidences that cannot be explained and that in
fact might be miracles.
Brenda Meaney excels in being a believable, sexy, highly
intelligent Hilary who also convinces us that she is sincere and not sappy in
her hope that there is a God who might be listening to her nightly solicitations. Bringing into some form of her consciousness
the whereabouts of a child she once gave up as a teenager for adoption is all
she seeks. Stoppard provides a path in
keeping with her own theory where this might just be possible.
Each of the others in this staged orchestra assembled at
ACT’s West Coast premiere of The Hard
Problem brings a singular personality that leaves a lasting, unique
impression. Mike Ryan is the wildly
successful hedge fund investor, Jerry Krohl, who has used some of the fortune
he has won legally gambling in the marketplace with others’ moneys in order to
establish the brain research center now carrying his name. As such, he is an outward egotist with much bass
horn bravado in his bigger-than-life speech and stance but also an egotist who does
eventually show some altruistic heart.
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| Brenda Meaney (Hilary) and Narea Kang (Bo) |
Narea Kang is the Chinese-born, Cambridge mathematical whiz,
Bo, who joins Hilary’s team and constructs what seems as a break-through study
to answer the chicken-egg question of which came first: ego-drive or altruism. Her Bo is complicated and not easily
deciphered even though she is a strong scientific voice for formulaic
explanations of psychological development.
She becomes the lover of Amahl but has a secret love that leads her down
a path that defies all logic and professional ethics, hoping to enhance that
person’s career and possibly her own interests of the heart. Ms. Kang plays all sides of this complex
puzzle with astute prowess.
Rounding out the key persona are the bassoon-voiced, mostly serious-faced
researcher Ursula (Stacy Ross) and her piccolo-prancing, Pilates-instructing
life partner, Julia (Safiya Fredericks) -- the lighter, more joyous, and fun half
of their pairing. Carmen Steele is Cathy
Krohl, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Jerry and a key to the mounting
question how much miracles may in fact play in a world dominated by the hard
sciences.
Andrew Boyce has created an eye-popping scenic design where
the numerous locales and their fixtures enter and exit with the ease of
gigantic floating panels against the backdrop of a mammoth projection
screen. That a heavenly power is somehow
a bias of Stoppard’s thinking is reinforced in Mr. Boyce’s overall design and
in Russell H. Champa’s exquisite, masterfully timed lighting. Angelic, fluffy clouds dominate the
background screen that smack of some power greater than the human ones that
created the scenes’ foreground fixtures of ultra-modern corporate offices and
upscale apartments. Two tree trunks
touch and climb like a Jacob’s ladder through a hole in the ceiling, from which
glowing light sometimes appears just when the story needs a bit of miraculous
influence. And the sound design and
original music of Brendan Aanes (with Nick Perloff-Giles also contributing to
the score) put the finishing touches on smooth transitions and appropriate
mood-setting throughout.
So are we inherently altruistic or do we help others as a
means of ultimately helping ourselves?
Hilary’s final act of integrity seems to give away the playwright’s bias
toward the former. However, when we walk
out of the theatre having just seen how happy she is not only because of an
unexpected personal miracle but also because she is about to venture into a
new, highly desired next career step thanks to a personal sacrifice she made
for another’s well-being, Tom Stoppard seems to be saying to us with a smirk
that there are in fact no easy answers to hard problems.
Rating: 5 E
The Hard Problem
continues through November 13, 2016, on the Geary Stage of American
Conservatory Theatre, 405
Geary Street, San Francisco. Tickets are
available online at http://www.act-sf.org/ or by calling the box office
415-749-2228.
Photos by Kevin Berne
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