Box office: 08.'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' is a wonderful and truly fascinating play, with beautifully developed characters and Tom Stoppard's very intelligent and witty script that William Shakespeare himself would be proud of. The cheering fact is that this is a young man’s play that still seems sprightly, invigorating and even moving in its preoccupation with the inevitability of death.Īt the Old Vic, London, until 29 April. Even if the action briefly stalls in the final third, Leveaux’s production keeps the momentum going and is full of witty touches: the Hamlet eruptions are neatly done, with Luke Mullins as the prince sporting exactly the same chiselled profile as John Neville in the role at the Old Vic long ago, and the play scene gets amusingly out of hand as the actors become sexually over-enthusiastic.Īnna Fleischle’s design, with its cloud-capped canvases, adds a little touch of Magritte to the night. Good as Radcliffe and McGuire are, it is Haig who comes close to stealing the evening. But they form a classic double-act whose quickfire exchanges disguise the fact they are both struggling to find identity and purpose in a world that makes little sense.Īt the same time, he suggests that the travelling troupe at his command provide sexual favours on request and that he himself is amorously fixated on his lead boy, played by Matthew Durkan with skittish grace.
Each, at times, partakes of the other’s qualities. Radcliffe’s bearded Rosencrantz is lean, anxious and prone to sudden attacks of panic: McGuire’s clean-shaven Guildenstern is broad-featured, toothy and determined to look on the bright side. The comedy comes across well in this production because the two lead actors are so sharply contrasted. But if the play still works, it is because Stoppard strikes an astonishing balance between cross-talk comedy and poignant awareness of mortality. There are, of course, obvious echoes of Beckett in that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are uncertain of their past, puzzled by the present and blind as to the future. At any moment you feel the idea of building a whole play around two peripheral figures caught up in events at Elsinore could easily fall apart.
What impresses is the high-wire act that Stoppard undertakes. But it is the wit of the young Stoppard that keeps the play fresh and alive. It helps that this revival stars Daniel Radcliffe, who is perfectly matched by Joshua McGuire, and that David Leveaux’s production is nimble and inventive.
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