Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Tickets

The Theatre Royal Haymarket are proud to announce the continuation of Sir Trevor Nunn’s much acclaimed directorial season at the theatre with a production of Sir Tom Stoppard’s innovative existentialist work ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’, running from the 16th of June to the 20th of August 2011. This unique and radical work tells the tragi-comic story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, who remain unaware of the events of the classic play unfolding around them. Nunn’s experience and masterful direction, coupled with Stoppard’s unmistakable zest for language and his poignant combination of absurdist  ideas with deep philosophical truths, mean that this play is definitely one not to miss.

The play is set during the events of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, its title being a direct quote from that play. While in ‘Hamlet’ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perform only a small part in the actions of the play, here the roles are reversed - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s clownish musings become the body of the work, while Hamlet, Claudius and the rest have little presence or importance to their story. The action takes place primarily in the periods which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spend off-stage in ‘Hamlet’, during which times the pair discuss various subjects at length, ranging from the nonsensical to the deeply meaningful. The one thing that is constant in their conversations is their obliviousness to the implications of their debates, and Stoppard artfully invokes absurdist and existentialist concepts through his characters’ lack of stability and reliability. Their own memories and powers of thought often fail them; they move away from their profound insights as quickly as they reach them, and at times the characters themselves seem to be interchangeable. Finally, as in ‘Hamlet’, the pair are condemned to death, but will they leave the world and the play as entirely ignorant of their meaning and purpose as they have been throughout?

This play premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966, and has been referred to as Stoppard’s first masterpiece, due to its proficient synthesis of intelligence, humour and sadness. The play has also been likened to Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ in terms of its absurdist and existentialist subject matter. Rosencrantz is played by Samuel Barnett and Guildenstern is played by Jamie Parker, both of whom gained recognition through their roles in Alan Bennett’s original production of ‘The History Boys’.