What’s this play about? Hmmm. Well, that’s kind of a hard question. I’d say it’s an existentialist play. It’s about free will vs. determinism. If I had to describe it in faux-movie pitch terms, I’d say it’s Hamlet meets Waiting For Godot. It is also really, really funny, provided you’re an egghead. (Fortunately, I’m a bit of an egghead, and I saw the play with the two eggheads who raised me.) But if you must have a synopsis, here goes: Tom Stoppard’s premise is to take the events of Hamlet as interpreted by two minor characters and use that as a foundation for the exploration of themes of determinism vs. free will, epistemology, and literary structuralism. Our two protagonists hang about the castle of Elsinore, trying to figure out what is going on based solely on the information gleaned from the sparse scenes of Hamlet in which they appear.I have a friend who used to work at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and she is of the opinion that this is an extremely difficult play to perform correctly. While I’ve read the play, and seen the 1990 movie that introduced Tim Roth & Gary Oldman to America (and was filmed in Yugoslavia for some reason), this was the first time I’d actually seen it on stage. So while I don’t actually have any other productions to compare it to, I still concluded that my friend was totally right in her opinion. All plays are about language, obviously. But this one is having so much fun playing around with language, and it has such high-minded and abstract concepts at its core, that it is very hard to follow unless the spectator stays very focused throughout the performance. This is complicated further because there is so much dialogue crammed into the play, and it is coming at you so fast.
Fortunately, the two excellent actors who played the leads made it easy to stay focused. Despite the play’s running joke that no one, including the lead duo themselves, can remember which is Guildenstern and which is Rosencrantz, Raymond Bokhour (as Rosencrantz - I think) and Liam Craig (as Guildenstern?) create two distinct characters who complement each other by their differences. Bokhour’s Rosencrantz (or is it Guildenstern?) is ingenuous and curious, ready to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who can help him figure out what’s going on. Meanwhile, Liam Craig, as Guildenstern (or perhaps Rosencrantz) is cynical, suspicious, and more than a bit angry at finding himself in such a bizarre and nonsensical spot. Both become increasingly visibly frustrated as the play continues and the answers they so seek fail to materialize. The pair is on stage for pretty much the whole time, so they’d better be sympathetic and interesting. Otherwise, time will crawl along like a slug in molasses. The acting, as usual for the Studio Theater, is consistently good. Drew Edelsheim also deserves praise as the Player King, who appears often, seems to know more than he lets on, and gets to deliver one of the plays choicest lines: “We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.” (He doubly deserves praise since he had the unenviable task of replacing Floyd King, a true pillar of Washington, D.C.’s underappreciated theater community.)
I dug the set design. I’ve heard that not everyone did. I thought it was innovative, and more importantly, worked within the context of the play. When putting on a play that mainly involves two cats standing around having involved conversations about what’s going on, I think it makes perfect sense to have them in a setting which appears fairly bland and generic. Adding lots of trapdoors, hidden panels, and moving walls allows the actors to move about in unorthodox ways and also means the set can be opened up when necessary. (One thing that I particularly like about the Studio Theatre’s main space is that the seats sort of curve around the stage, which projects slightly into the center of the seats in the middle. This encourages more direct interaction between the actors and the audience.) There are very few props, and with the exception of a couple of chairs, no furniture appears on the set either. This puts extra emphasis on the actors, which is a good thing for a play as high-minded and focused on language as this one.
The lighting designer did a great job, too. Perhaps a lot of people don’t consciously notice the lighting at a theatre, but good lighting design can add to the effectiveness of the production by heightening emotion or adding nuance to a particular scene. Also, the lighting syncs up very well with the set in this production, which is not always the case.
I was not as thrilled by the costume design. A minimalist set will ad extra attention to the actors, and to their clothing. The costume design wasn’t bad. Most of the individual outfits work for the individuals wearing them. But they lack an overall thematic coherence. For the most part, they go very well with the actors wearing them, but not that well with each other.
The Studio Theatre billed this as a “40th anniversary” production, as the play premiered at the Old Vic in 1967 (when Tom Stoppard was not yet thirty). Despite that, it’s not dated at all, and it’s easy to see why it’s performed so often. It’s also easy to see how hard it is to do right. Apparently, I’m not the only person who enjoyed it. Bob Mondelo, of NPR and WETA’s Out And About, said this is the first production he's seen that equals the one he saw on Broadway in 1967. The reviewer for Washingtonian magazine gave it four stars. Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal’s theater critic said it was “the best Rosencrantz & Guildenstern [he’s] seen on stage.” Wow.
I can’t make that claim, as it’s also the only “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern” I’ve seen on stage. But I can say this: it reminded me why I love live theatre. There’s a magic moment right at the beginning, when the lights go down, and you know you’re going to see something unique. No two performances are ever exactly the same. But even if you catch this particular production on an off-night, I bet you’re still going to love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment