Ever wanted to know more about the minor characters in a major play? Ever wondered what they were up to all that time they weren’t on stage? Well, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead explores this notion in all its complex entirety, from 20th May until 11th June at Chichester Festival Theatre.
As the play began and I noted the sparse set, just one tree and two characters sitting melancholically on their belongings, I had a sudden and nightmarish déjà vu. Was I about to watch Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the one and only piece of literature that I failed an essay on at university? Falling from grace because your views aren’t in line with some stuffy old literature professor’s can really put you off a subject but I’m not bitter (honest!) and I still love literature. The whole point of literature, and indeed all creative arts, is that each work is open to interpretation and has myriad meanings. Let me put it like this, going to watch a play like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead without an open mind or a fertile imagination would most definitely lead to a baffling and disagreeable evening.
We first meet our protagonists in Shakespeare’s Hamlet but in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Stoppard retells this famous works through their eyes. It seems that they are a much bigger part of the story but they are clueless as to who, what where and when. This bewilderment is communicated through complex word games (that any literary geek would relish in), constant looks of astonishment, repetition of actions, random meetings with even more random characters and the ongoing feeling that the world’s a stage and we’re reading from our scripts and playing out our parts until curtains down.
This play is about not a lot really but it’s cleverly executed and thought provoking to the extreme. You’ll probably cross the theatre car park having some sort of inwards philosophical debate about what a carry on life can be. However, if you’re anything like me then that’s your idea of a good night out, so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is just the job for you.
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