Nothing says summer in Cambridge like gentle riverside breezes, tall glasses of ice cold lemonade, rapists, spies and the Spanish Inquisition. Ahhh... Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater (HRST). For the past three months, an intrepid team of undergraduate artisans has entertained the greater Boston community (and those few souls unable to seasonally escape our hallowed halls). In their efforts they drew upon British wordsmith Tom Stoppard, American literary (figuratively) giant Tennessee Williams and Dale Wasserman's musical classic Man of La Mancha.

In production throughout second semester, HRST put together an artistically and financially successful season. While Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and La Mancha were widely enjoyed, they closely resembled much of the term-time student work that makes its way into the Loeb Experimental Theatre. The one standout of the season was Stoppard's spy thriller Hapgood. Directed by Nick Parillo '00, Hapgood was a delightfully exhilarating glimpse into the self-aware world of Cold War intelligence. Slickly stylized from the opening montage to the final showdown, this vibrant production possessed the capability of overshadowing the many fine performances; no doubt sensing the challenge, the cast rose far beyond normal undergraduate levels to carry the day. In the title role, Emily Knapp '03 was a divine combination of iron-fisted determination and motherly vulnerability.

Opposite her, the defective defector of James Carmichael '01, an ex-Russian physicist and father of Hapgood's son, provided a touchingly human portrait of man torn between the family he loves and the country he serves - whichever one it may be. Attention must also be paid to the wonderfully villainous Ridley of Tom Price '02. He possessed enough venomous charm to make a Bond villain proud.

One of the interesting features of summer theatre is the overlap within the individual productions. Senior Jay Chaffin transformed from a condemned Spaniard-with-a-song-in-his-heart into a gambling New Orleans philanderer; Ari Appel '03, the guitarist in La Mancha's orchestra, took a turn across the boards as Stanley in Streetcar. Dan Cozzens '03, in a rather peculiar instance of ethnic globalization, went from Russian to Mexican in a matter of weeks.

The one critical question which remains unresolved is whether there is a significant enough qualitative increase to warrant the $12 ticket prices of the HRST; while it is by no means an extortionate amount for an evening of entertainment, it bears consideration in light of the much more appealing price tag attached to semester Ex shows (free). While the HRST shows were more technically savvy than most, the designers can only raise the bar of a production so high, leaving it for the director and cast to hurdle across it or falter in the effort; La Mancha and Streetcar quite nearly succeeded, but only Hapgood achieved a seemingly effortless synergy of style and substance.