Review: ROSENCRANTZ AND GIUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD

By Toby Zinman

For the Inquirer

Tom Stoppard's brilliant play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, now in a lively production at the Wilma Theater, takes its title from the last scene in Hamlet when a messenger arrives to report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two friends of the Prince of Denmark, are dead.  In Shakespeare's play, this news doesn't move us much—they are, after all, two smarmy, not-too-bright guys sent to spy on Hamlet, and we have larger, tragic deaths to deal with—like everybody's.

But in Stoppard's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's ends should move us greatly; after all, we're much more like them than we're like Danish royalty:  bewildered, thrust into the drama of life and then given no direction as to how to live it. "Life is a gamble at terrible odds—if it was a bet you wouldn't take it." Mortality is murder.

So these two guys, philosophizing like mad and worrying like crazy, live in Hamlet's wings; once in a while, they find themselves speaking Elizabethan English as they are swept into their little roles in the big onstage play. If you don't know Hamlet, you won't get all the jokes, but you'll certainly get this play.

Keith Conallen as Rosencrantz and Jered McLenigan as Guildenstern are both terrific: droll and desperate and amazingly flexible,  this production's style could be summed up as vaudevillian yoga. They collapse on the floor as though they're puppets with broken strings, and they are as agile verbally as they are physically. But the physical business after a while seems just peculiar and show-offy rather than a style that speaks meaning.

Ed Swidey as the Player is superb; his role as the leader of a troupe of itinerant actors makes him Stoppard's spokesman in the play, commenting on the business of theater-making. And watch for the difference between his deaths—some nifty acting going on there.

And although  Blanka Zizka's direction makes some odd choices, like using the unintelligible set from her recent production of Hamlet—walls covered in distracting, ugly graffiti—to which she adds at one point gigantic, goofy swimming sharks. It is odd that the production mocks the Hamlet scenes, when send-up is not Stoppard's intent. Using the cast and costumes of Wilma's earlier production (except there's a new Hamlet) proves, among other things, that "you [can] look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else."

What seemed lacking in this very enjoyable production is sharp contrast between the clueless world Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live in and the opulent Shakespearean world, which might let us feel their profound dilemma.  And because the play is so witty, the audience felt the need to laugh loudly at everything, even the moments that should be quietly, ironically moving. But go figure audiences.

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Wilma Theater, Broad & Spruce Sts. Through June 14. Tickets $10-25. Information: wilmatheater.org or 215-546-7824