Who am I and what am I doing here?
That’s about all the title characters in Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” want to know. The Rogue Theatre is staging the play in repertory with Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Poor R and G — they never do get the answers to their questions. Confusion follows them around and they just can’t shake it. But oh, do we have fun watching them stumble blindly toward their death.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were minor characters in “Hamlet” — the title of the Stoppard play is one of the lines in Shakespeare’s.
We barely knew ’em in “Hamlet.” They were school chums of the prince of Denmark, summoned by the king to spy on Hamlet, who catches on quickly and manages to send them on their way and to their death.
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Ah, but Stoppard knew what to do with these characters. He has elevated them to major roles — making Hamlet a minor one in the process — and turned them into personalities that would fit right in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”
The play loves words — it twists them, caresses them, hurls them and whispers them. And the duo in the title roles treated them with the eloquence they deserved. Patty Gallagher is the more dim-witted Rosencrantz; Ryan Parker Knox is Guildenstern.
The two approach the absurdist piece as though it was anything but — which is how it should be.
We are guessing that’s not as easy as it sounds. Because, really, how does one deliver a line such as “A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself?” Or, “We’re actors — we’re the opposite of people.” And a personal favorite: “Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it going to end?”
Cynthia Meier directed this piece with a sense of joy and a sense of silly. But at the heart of it, she and her players never lost sight that the characters long for purpose and a deeper sense of self. Nor did they let us forget that Stoppard’s play is a musing on death.
Death, of course, with plenty of laughs.
