Word: guildensterne
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While Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which recently finished its run on the mainstage, may be Tom Stoppard’s most famous play, Travesties is certainly his most virtuoso, flawlessly combining the plots of two plays and pulling off stunts like a scene in the style of a chapter from Ulysses or a debate about dadaism, traditional art and love composed entirely of lines from Shakespeare. Travesties features the lives of three famous foreigners who lived in Zurich during World War I: James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin, and the dadaist Tristan Tzara. Each of these men is radical...
THEATER | Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead...
...absurdist set, by Julian M. Rose ’06, suggests a medieval production of “Laugh-In,” full of portals that slide open and swing shut, and staircases that zigzag to nowhere. It’s an illogical set to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and certainly to the audience, yet the play’s other characters navigate it with ease. It’s both funny and uncanny; in other words, it’s ideally suited to the play. No less praiseworthy is the sound design by John T. Drake...
...cast, outside of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and their foil, a player (Mike B. Hoagland ’07), is more or less restricted to prop status; none of them talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for long enough to make an impression. Yet all of the actors give the sense that there are unspoken depths to their characters—a crucial skill, considering that their characters have far more space to themselves in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Polonius (Tim M. Marrinan ’06) is suitably obsequious, Ophelia (Andrea M. Spillmann ’07) is weepy when weepiness...
There’s an ephemeral quality to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It treats you to a lot of interesting philosophizing and wordplay, and it’s a lot of fun to watch, but I don’t remember a lick of the dialogue a day later. Instead, I remember Broadwater’s hapless sincerity, Hodgson’s idiot scowl, my laughter-strained stomach, and the show’s deeply affecting sense of existential loneliness. That’s a package worth sitting through two intermissions...