Word: guildensterne
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...shoulder as he writes. I certainly have nothing against Tom Stoppards, who is the most original, witty and maybe even profound playwright to emerge in English for a decade. But I think he may have something against critics in general, having once been one himself, before his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern broke on the London theater scene. Perhaps he shares reviewer-character Moon's jealousy of the first stringer who overshadows him, or reviewer-character Birdboot's moral outrage at other critic's criticism of his rather intense interest in a new actress each opening night. All I know is that...
Seven years ago, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, British Playwright Tom Stoppard turned Hamlet inside out and seemed to prove that even for bit players, great tragedy has no silver lining. When critics inquired about the play's message, Stoppard averred that this is no age for message in the theater. "One writes about human beings under stress," he said, "whether it is about losing one's trousers or being nailed to a cross." To risk a play whose primary level was philosophical, he added, "would be fatal." In Jumpers, that is just the gamble...
Bill Kuntz '72 is a former undergraduate producer whose credits include The Most Happy Fella, She Loves Me, Arsenic and Old Lace, Funny Girl, Subject to Fits, and Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead...
...Especially fine is the scene where the king persuades and instructs the two murderers concerning the death of Banquo and his son whose end is needed, he explains, "Masking the business from the common eye for sundry weighty reasons." The two identically costumed soldiers are reminiscent of Rosencranz and Guildenstern in their ignobility: the king alternately wheedles and bullies them. "I will advise you where to plant yourselves, Acquaint you with the perfect spy o' th' time...
JUMPERS Tom Stoppard's first full-length drama since Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead could have been written by a pixilated Orwell, a tipsy Shaw or a sozzled T.S. Eliot sounding off on metaphysics in a disorderly pub. Jumpers is an intoxicatingly clever absurdist comedy, a philosophical disquisition on the existence of God and the nature of truth, good and evil. It is also monstrously difficult to pin down...