Review: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Guthrie Theater
Written by: Sarah Meister ‘16
May 3, 2014
How do you make Hamlet more existential than it already is? The answer: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The Guthrie Theater, in association with the Acting Company, presents an enjoyable, straightforward production of Tom Stoppard’s play, performed in repertory with the Shakespeare classic it so cleverly draws on. “We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off,” a character notes early on in the play, and that’s just what Dead is.
We follow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (the old school friends who betray Hamlet at King Claudius’ request) through Hamlet’s plot, witnessing disjointed conversations where the two men fall into existential realization as quickly as they fall out of it. There are plenty of benefits to performing the plays in repertory, and the actors certainly seem to be enjoying themselves onstage. While the two clowns are Dead’s central figures, lots of familiar faces from Hamlet make brief appearances, often playing caricatures more than characters. John Skelley, who delivered an appropriately serious Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play, pokes fun at the brooding Dane in Dead. A particularly memorable gag includes Hamlet’s silent mouthing of the famed “to be or not to be” speech in front of other action, and it’s nice to see Skelley take the unquestionably overplayed, overly dramatic role with a grain of salt.
Ian Gould and Grant Fletcher Prewitt are certainly capable of holding up the show on their own as Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, respectively. Gould towers over Prewitt, and the production works in plenty of jokes to highlight the difference in their statures, a nice departure from what have become the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern de rigueur, where the two are completely interchangeable looks-wise. For the most part, Gould and Prewitt work well as a team, but their comedic timing sometimes slips a bit, and it’s all too clear when their blocking is improvised. The play’s opening leaves the two men running aimlessly around the stage, flipping countless coins and looking generally out-of-control in a gag that has the potential to be carefully calculated comedic gold. The actors do manage to hold their own for most of the show, though, and it’s easy to watch their verbal sparring and existential postulating without getting bored, which is more a testament to the text than it is to the actors.
The play itself is a brilliant illumination of one of the greatest works in the English language, and the Guthrie, though it sometimes wobbles a bit, manages to hold its own in this new production.
[We are grateful to the Elizabeth S. Thompson Memorial Fund for making these theater trips possible.]