Word: guildensterne
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some plays open windows; others open worlds. The excitement attending Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is that it is one of those rare plays able to open worlds of art, life and death. The sun of this drama is coruscating wit and laughter; its shade is melancholy death. Broadway may not see a more auspicious playwriting debut this season...
Stoppard has chosen to use Hamlet as a metaphor for existence. Through his fable he marches good Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern blindfolded. They know little of their roles and less of themselves. In fear and trembling, they jolly their way to their doom. Every man does the same, Stoppard implies, for no man can divine the purpose of existence except to know that life is uncertain and death is sure...
...Cook's Garden, an Ira Levin melodrama about medical ethics, with Burl Ives, Screen Actor Keir Dullea (David and Lisa) and George C. Scott as director. From Britain, David Merrick is bringing a sure conversation piece: Playwright Tom Stoppard's existentialist upending of Hamlet, titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Another West End import is the adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel about a slightly bonkers Edinburgh schoolmarm, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The title role, perfected by Vanessa Redgrave, now goes to Australian-born Zoe Caldwell. Arriving more belatedly from Britain is Harold Pinter...
...Hamlet is also the first supremely self-conscious hero to tread the stage. This is where Richard Pasco's failure is most manifest. He portrays a computer's Hamlet, mechanically feeding himself punch cards marked Father's Ghost, Ophelia, Laertes, Horatio, Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and responding mechanically to them. His co-players do not perceptibly help by acting like crumpled punch cards...
Shostakovich's score swells at all the wrong places. When Hamlet confronts Ophelia "mad," there is a chance for some very sinister stuff: a glaze-eyed Aryan appears, bearing down on her. But up jumps a nervous little Dragnet theme to turn it ludicrous. When Hamlet asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "Am I easier to fret than a pipe?" the scene is played in heavy silence that exaggerates its portent. But presumbaly that's the director's doing, as, unfortunately, is a lot else...