Word: stoppard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Screenplay by Tom Stoppard...
...feels it went wrong long before Tom Stoppard sat down to write his doggedly faithful adaptation of John le Carre's best seller, long before director Fred Schepisi shouted "Action!" (or, possibly, in this case, "Stasis!"), perhaps even before the novelist set to work on his book. Le Carre seems to have gone off at about the moment the literary world made him its designated serious entertainer and he started believing his enthralled reviews. All his recent books contain far more writing than they require to explore their conventional characters and ideas. "Oh, get on with it," one snorts, setting...
Casting Heather Gunn as Rosencrantz might at first seem an unusual choice, but Stoppard's playful revision, Gunn's outstanding performance and the sexual ambiguity of the characters in Shakespeare's own version ultimately all make the casting choice an effective...
...Stoppard was well aware that the actors in the Bard's time were all men, and he exploits the ambiguous sexuality in the work. Witness the "tragedian" boy-prostitute, Alfred (Jon Finks), who fumbles constantly with the folds of the skirt he repeatedly dons and sheds. And there's the added nuance of the the implications of the close relationship between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern--the title characters cannot even tell themselves apart...
Glenn Kiser is also delightful as the aggrieved Prince of Denmark. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard imparts a bit more method into Hamlet's madness than can be found in Shakespeare's text, and Kiser adds a devilish glitter to the part...