Theatre 2024: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

The final show in our “Off-Mirvish” subscription series was the remounting of Tom Stoppard’s 1966 absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, highlighting two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Within the context of the play Hamlet, Rosencranz & Guildenstern (henceforth mentioned together as R&G) are two bumbling former childhood friends of the Danish Prince who are summoned to Elsinore Castle by his mother Gertrude and stepfather Claudius to observe and report on Hamlet’s strange behaviour.  They watch on as Hamlet mounts the play  “The Murder of Gonzago” to trap Claudius into admitting that he murdered Hamlet’s father.  In response, Claudius bribes R&G into betraying Hamlet by escorting him by boat to England with a letter to the English King requesting Hamlet’s execution.  Hamlet discovers the plot and switches the letter with a new one indicating that R&G should be put to death instead.

To some degree, Stoppard’s play retells this small subplot of the play Hamlet, but from the perspective of R&G.  We first meet the pair as they sit together in an indeterminant location, repeatedly playing a game betting on whether a flipped coin comes down heads or tails with the winner pocketing the coin. Guildenstern stubbornly calls “Heads” and loses 89 consecutive coins which seems to violate basic laws of probability.  This coin flip scene is our first clue that we are watching an absurdist play.  Absurdism is the philosophy that the universe is irrational and meaningless and trying to find meaning is a useless endeavour that leads to conflict.  Theatre of the Absurd is a term coined for plays that focus on absurdism.  Throughout the play, Guildenstern becomes upset at the incongruity of his experiences and acts out aggressively because of it.  Rosencrantz is gentler in nature and seems satisfied to just go with the flow since he can’t (or won’t) actively change anything anyways.  He just wants to be happy and to make his friend happy as well, to the point where he rigs a new coin game so that Guildenstern would win every time.

R&G seem unsure of who they are (mixing up each other’s names), why they are there, where they are headed, or what they can remember.  This theme of Individual Identify or lack thereof, further accentuates the irrationality of the universe.  They meet up with a theatre troupe led by a character known as “The Player” who seems to hold the answers to their confusion but does not or cannot reveal them clearly to R&G.  When they first meet, the Player refers to R&G as “fellow artists” as if alluding to the fact that the pair are actually actors or characters within a larger story (i.e. the play of Hamlet?).  Because of this, it is debatable whether R&G have any free will or ability to change a destiny that has already been pre-determined for them. While they consider it, they make no efforts to choose any path other than the one laid out for them.  Their fate and the inevitability of their deaths are so set in stone that it is actually in the title of Stoppard’s play (no spoiler alert required).  In this regard, R&G act as a stand-in for the “everyman” since death will ultimately come to us all.

Stoppard cleverly weaves actual scenes from Hamlet with the extra discourse and musings between Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and the Player. When speaking to any of the other characters within the play Hamlet, the Shakespearean text is quoted making it very meta since we are watching a play within a play.  The two titular characters are played by Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd who previously paired up to play the Hobbits Merry and Pippen in the movie version of Lord of the Rings.They are both excellent in their roles as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern respectively, especially Monaghan whose facial expressions exude his character’s sweet innocence and bewilderment.

I’m not sure that I fully appreciate Theatre of the Absurd and why plays of this genre are considered entertaining.  Perhaps it takes too much brain power for my taste.  At very least, Hamlet is referenced in this Stoppard play, which gives it some relatable context for those who are familiar with Shakespeare’s classic as opposed to watching the absurdist play Waiting For Godot, or as I like to call it, “Waiting for this Play to End”.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a three-act play that spans over three hours including two short intermissions.  This is an extremely long time to concentrate and try to follow along while inane, nonsensical dialogue is rapidly dispensed.  In the end, what I got out of it is this: “Life is absurd and then you die”.  I think this could have been conveyed in about half the time.