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Hapless Hamlet pair on fine form
ROSENCRATZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
The Rosemary Branch
FOLLOWING success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006, this colourful interpretation of Tom Stoppard’s original 1966 play is brought to London in its full glory.
Stoppard’s first and most famous play re-tells the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, with the focus shifted to the two lesser-known characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
These hapless courtiers, destined for a tragic end, are wonderfully analysed and exposed, abandoning their soulless purpose of plot devices within Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Director Ben Waring successfully revitalises these minor characters in his witty version, opening with the dynamic twosome resembling young British backpackers embarking on a journey across Thailand.
Rosencrantz (Dan Jennings) fits the bill adorning the shorts and carefree abandonment of a young traveller, accompanied by his partner in crime, Guildenstern (Tom Oakley).
Both place bets while travelling to Elsinore, with intervention posed in front of them on a screen which pops up and reveals King Claudius and Gertrude urging the pair to “glean what afflicts” Hamlet.
The vigour of the The Player (Francis J Exell) and Tragedian (Cariad Lloyd) serve to inject a strikingly ridiculous and fun element amid the inescapable questioning posed by the two protagonists.
The regular interjections by this duo, witty and rapid, balance alongside the pensiveness of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
But without doubt the infectious Jennings and the sharp Oakley steal the show, reviving the characters with their original performances, delivering the dialogue with a natural ease.
Putting on this existentialist play, uncovering the layers from the questions of identity to the philosophy of death ‘in our experience everything is death’ is no mean feat.
Yet Waring has splendidly revived Stoppard’s work with flair in a frolicsome staging where timing is everything.
Until Feb 18
020 7704 6665
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