Word: rosencrantzes
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THEATER | Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
...muddle around with their pea-sized brains; it’s Abbott and Costello Meet Hamlet, except that neither man has any idea who’s on first. Broadwater’s Guildenstern is earnest and restless, always yammering questions and never getting answers. Hodgson’s Rosencrantz is a layabout twit, his perpetually gaping mouth suggesting a severely inbred bloodline. It is Stoppard’s genius to make these idiots the carriers of a profound existential dread; in Stoppard’s hands, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become philosopher-fools, capable of giving us both...
...audience unhindered. The 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...