"To be or not to be?" That's about the only important question the title characters don't ask each other in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard's clever 1966 play about what happens to two minor characters from Hamlet outside their scenes in the play. No coincidence that they come from a script best known for a soliloquy about the nature of existence and death; Stoppard's brilliant script is all about the same big questions.
Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are courtiers who have known Hamlet from their student days. They are recruited by the king, Hamlet's uncle, to deliver him to England along with a letter that will have him executed. However, the cunning prince exchanges the letter for one that calls for the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead. In Stoppard's play, which is something like a more upbeat Waiting for Godot, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exist between the scenes of Hamlet in a troubling universe where even the rising and setting of the sun can't be taken for granted, and action can only be precipitated by the arrival of other characters.
Their plight works as a metaphor for human existence. They seem to have no idea they're in a play, although they have occasional glimmers of recognition that there's an audience watching them. They don't know where they came from or where they're going, and although they ask a lot of questions, they find no answers. In fact, their efforts to understand their situation by means of logical deduction generally fail completely.
The play is also a loving extended joke about the nature of theatre itself (it manages to include a play-within-a-play-within-a-play, and it has a character who actually yells "Fire" in a crowded theatre.) It poses the puzzling question as to whether a performance exists if no one's there to watch, and it's bursting with quotable quips about the stage ("We're actors – we're the opposite of people!")
It's a pleasure to get a chance to see this modern classic performed, and the current Hart House Theatre production, with able direction by Matthew Gorman, is enjoyable. The cast consists largely of recent theatre school graduates, and although they lack the experience to go as far with timing and expression as the script would allow, they do occasionally soar, especially with the physical comedy.
Andrew Knowlton as Guildenstern (or Rosencrantz), who slightly resembles David Tennant, endows his character with an anxious (though futile) determination. Jim Armstrong as Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) comes across like a young Brendan Gleeson with a touch of Samwise Gamgee, and his discomfort, slower to build, eventually rises to ill-contained panic.
David Tripp, who has something of a Ralph Fiennes look about him, is perhaps the most successful in animating his character (the Player) with intensity and putting across all the sense of his lines with coherenence and comedy. Benjamin Muir, as a Hamlet who's part Edward Cullen (from Twilight), part Joaquin Phoenix and part Adam Ant (if you remember Adam Ant), is also hilarious.
The set and lighting by Stephan Droege, whom I have long thought of as Toronto's best lighting designer, are wonderful: a jagged bit of terrain illuminated by a sun (or moon) that changes constantly into semi-recognizable images (a human brain, a flower).
In the end, is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead hopeful or depressing? On the face of it, we may all be wandering cluelessly through a nonsensical and uncontrollable universe with death our only certainty. On the other hand, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren't dead, really; there must hardly be an hour on this earth when someone isn't reading, rehearsing, performing or watching one of the plays they appear in. Maybe things aren't so bad after all.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead runs to October 6. For tickets, call 416-978-8849 or visit the University of Toronto box office.
Photo: The tragedians perform the play-within-the-play in the Hart House theatre production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
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