the player rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead

There are moments in this production when the play seems to center on the Player, which is about as gymnastic a trick as making ''Hamlet'' seem to be a play about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This production, however, is aerated by its three leading actors, John Rubinstein as Guildenstern, Stephen Lang as Rosencrantz and John Wood, who makes the Player a full partner in the comedy. The result is valid in certain performance areas, but not sharply defined, and not as astute as the original Broadway production or the version presented last summer at the Stratford Festival in Canada.

Robert Carsen's revival at the Roundabout is middling on both counts. On the other hand, Rosencrantz will simply go his madcap way to oblivion.Īny production should capture both the Shakespeare and the Beckett in the Stoppard. Guildenstern can be didactic and pragmatic he wants to learn from experience. Stoppard's Estragon and Vladimir, two bewildered souls waiting for a Godot who will never come. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, in that order, Mr. On a literary level, the work owes almost as much to Samuel Beckett as it does to William Shakespeare and also bears an acknowledged debt to T. Stoppard's mind is like a trompe l'oeil painting. The play is an intellectual comedy, with intricate word plays, colliding contradictions and verbal and visual puns. As they inevitably realize, the only meaning to their lives can come with their deaths. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are classic fall guys, replaceable pawns in the chess game of history. One thing is certain: they are not heroes, although they are martyrs of a kind. To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as ultimate outsiders, supporting players in the lives of others, the plot of Shakespeare's play is indecipherable.Īs in an actor's nightmare, the two academic idlers wander around the stage wondering what roles they are supposed to be playing - as messengers, hired assassins or victims. The inspiration for the play begins with the idea of turning ''Hamlet'' inside out. TOM STOPPARD'S virtuosity was immediately apparent in his debut as a playwright with ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,'' something that can be passingly perceived in a 20th-anniversary revival of the play opening last night at the Roundabout Theater Company.

The player rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead