Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, (Tom Stoppard) By Lezah

Bard on the Beach, Vancouver, BC – July 13 to Sept. 22

Swank Home


Directed by Dean Paul Gibson; starring Haig Sutherland as Rosencrantz, Stephen Holmes as Guildenstern and Russell Roberts as The Player

“Audiences know what to expect and that is all they are prepared to believe in.”

Last night, we went to see Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which was presented as part of the Bard On the Beach festival, as it is tangentially connected to Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being the two stooges sent by King Claudius to accompany Hamlet to England.

In Stoppard’s play we see two ill-fated pawns, little more than plot devices in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, suddenly elevated to starring roles in their own drama. Unfortunately for them, they neither understand their scripted lives, nor are they able to deviate from them. In a featureless world where logic and the conventional structures of time and memory are empty of any significance or reliability, the characters are forced to use word games and wagers as a form of currency and to ask questions in order to ease their over-arching anxiety.

Due to the nature of this world, R & G must depend on others to give their lives meaning, but when they are presented with information that will help them understand who they are, where they are going and where they came from – in the form of a play presented by the Player and his Tragedians – they are unable to assimilate and utilize it.

Looming questions of mortality are offset by humour, although the bleakness and desperation beneath the humour becomes increasingly more apparent as the play progresses.

The irony in all this lays in the similarity between Hamlet and his victims, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – stuck as they all are in their own dilemma, which seem insoluble and inexorable; they are mere spectators of their looming demise. All of us, both the ‘stars’ and the ‘bit players’, are the heroes of our own human drama – our struggles are as important and vital as the struggles of princes and kings or Olympian gods.

Last night’s Bard on the Beach performances were strong, with the possible exception of Colleen Wheeler as Gertrude, who delivered her lines in a sing-song style reminiscent of a Grade 8 Shakespeare production. The theatre-in-the-round seating worked well for this play, and we were blessed with a beautiful, warm night. Altogether, a great experience.