Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - NT LIve

The only other time I saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was at the Oxford Playhouse in 2005, a production by English Touring Theatre. I thought it was just wonderful so I was looking forward to seeing it again. For me, it has lost none of it's verve. One critic says Stoppard is "the most intellectually dexterous dramatist of our time" and this, one of his earliest plays, is him practicing the art of wordplay. But is R&G more than verbal acrobatics? Google Books have an extract from Act 1 which includes Guildenstern's speech about the law of probability. If you find this boring, this play is not for you. I found it dazzling.

I also think it is very funny. I laughed all the way through, chuckling quietly when even the live audience missed a beat. I never thought I would say this, but most of this was down to Daniel Radcliffe as the hopeless Rosencrantz ( or is that Guildenstern? They can never make up their minds although the script is quite clear.) Or is it that Radcliffe gets all the best lines? His dismay at their not having quizzed Hamlet properly is unforgettable. He is the Eric Morecombe to Joshua McGuire's brilliantly verbose Ernie Wise. (I remember McGuire as being one of the best things in the film About Time).

Then there is David Haig as The Player, the leader of the group of "actors" who perform that play in Hamlet. Haig will always be, in our house, associated with the TV comedy The Thin Blue Line as Detective Inspector Grim. Here he revives the same antics, but this time with Stoppard's words. He almost steals the show.

David Levaux has directed with a flourish and his coaching of the two leads pays dividends. I wasn't sure about how he presented the acting of the actual scenes from Hamlet. Luke Mullins as the Prince is like a third division John Neville. But was that on purpose? As R would say "I don't know?"

P.S. The live showing was from The Old Vic where we saw The Liar in 1990 and The Tempest in 2003. A wonderful theatre, even better with the stage projecting into the audience.