'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' at the Wilma

Those characters are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, childhood friends of Hamlet who are enlisted by Claudius, his newly crowned stepfather, first to spy on Hamlet and discover why he seems to be mad, and then to navigate his death. They fail at both in Hamlet, yet Stoppard finds them interesting enough to give them their own story.

“We do onstage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else,” says the First Player. What is offstage in Hamlet is presented here as both prequel and sequel to the classic work.

This play is called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, even though Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are very much alive throughout the play. Their deaths in this play, as in Hamlet, are merely a footnote in the final speech. And although their names are in the title of the play, they are once again, as in Hamlet, relegated to secondary status, allowing Ed Swidey as the First Player to steal the show.

Contortions and distortions

One of the reasons may be the conception of the production. Zizka puts the cast through contortions and distortions using a voice technique developed by Jean-René Toussaint called “stemwork.” While all these techniques to explore motivation and expression may be useful for actors wishing to plumb the depths of their characters, they are often less appealing to audiences who sit there befuddled as Ophelia walks in circles on a tilt, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern crawl around on their bellies.

For a playwright like Stoppard, it is an interesting approach to ground his wit in the body rather than the head, but for understanding it makes little sense, other than what we bring to it. “He’s crawling around like a serpent because he’s devious,” posited my neighbor at intermission. “I don’t get it,” said her friend.

Déjà vu

The cast was much the same as in the Wilma’s just completed production of Hamlet, and when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern interact with the characters from Hamlet, which they do periodically, the stage, costumes, music, and lighting are all taken directly from that production.

Keith Conallen as Rosencrantz and Jered McLenigan as Guildenstern play their parts as well as they might, considering that they have to crawl around while reciting Stoppard’s erudite lines. Unfortunately, what is intriguing in the beginning soon feels stylized and annoying. It’s hard to stay focused when their actions bear little relationship to the action of the play. Brian Ratcliffe’s Hamlet, minimal as it is, seems an appropriate foil for his childhood friends, but the other characters salvaged from the previous production are merely walk-ons, dressed up in costumes and pretending to be the people they had once brought to life.

Stoppard is creating midrash — filling in the spaces between the words, giving life to peripheral characters — but nothing makes them relevant. Hamlet barely knows who they are; they barely know themselves, even confusing their own names, so insignificant and interchangeable are they. What would Thursday be without Wednesday and Friday to anchor it? Who are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz without Shakespeare and Hamlet to give them purpose? Without a story, they have no definition. So Stoppard has tried to imagine their story, to give them the lives they never had.

Lost in their questions

But they don’t know what to do with these lives. They leave things to chance, playing a game of heads and tails that beats the odds, playing a game of questions because they have no answers. They are so lost in their questions, they can’t even see their own future when it is presented to them by the Players.

Just as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are disposable characters whose lives and deaths matter little to us in the original Hamlet, so the First Player is solely a means to an end — the presentation of a play wherein to “catch the conscience of the king.” But in Stoppard’s play, the First Player comes to life and dominates the stage, whether obstructing the protagonists or feigning a glorious death. And Ed Swidey, who seemed a bit misplaced in Hamlet, here plays his part full out.

Unlike the unlucky pair who drive the show, the First Player knows who he is. He lives for adulation, for applause. To put on a play for no one annihilates him. “We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened,” he protests when he has discovered that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were not there to see the performance they paid for.

And we the audience thereby become significant. When Guildenstern (or is it Rosencrantz?) breaks the fourth wall and shouts “Fire” and the house lights come up, we understand that we are important to the action as well. Without us there would be no play. The players would have ransomed their dignity with no one there to bear witness.