Word: stoppard
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THEATRICALLY AND intellectually, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of the last decade's most awesome dramatic conceptions. An ingenious retelling of Hamlet from the point of view of that tragedy's two incidental victims, this piece of absurd theater involves difficult staging, acute psychological insight, and beautiful language which demands highly subtle direction and acting...
...production are more than equal to the task. Under Lasky's thoughtful direction, the play has been almost more choreographed than merely staged. His eye for movement and careful attention to the interpretation of minor characters help create precisely that tension between absurd comedy and human tragedy at which Stoppard aims...
...Stoppard's themes are expressed in a Shakespearean motif: the constant juxtaposition of acting and living. Actors, directed by dramatists, whose actions are made meaningful by the approval of audiences, enjoy advantages that people in an indeterminate world do not share. While love and providence provide meaning for the characters of Shakespeare, Stoppard's people have no external frame of reference. Unable to see that they themselves create the significance of their actions, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are caught in a world where their identities and their living and dying are equally arbitrary...
...other shortcoming of the production is its editing of the text. Stoppard's text ends on Horatio's speech from Hamlet, in which his remarks on "casual slaughters" echo exactly Rosencrantz's desperate confusion. The Loeb production ends with the speeches of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which do not succeed as well in tying the work together and in reemphasizing the strange kinship of Shakespeare's and Stoppard's worlds...
ROSENCRANTZ AND GILDENSTERN ARE DEAD by Tom Stoppard: Harvard Dramatic Club director Arthur Lasky, Loeb Experimental Theatre May 4-6 7:30 PM FREE...