This play is a masterpiece. Since its first ever performance at this Festival in 1966 it has wowed audiences worldwide continuously, with its breathtaking word play, comedy and flights of existential fancy. Its simple premise is that two minor characters from Hamlet try to work out what is going on around them. In the process Stoppard manages to wittily, and sometimes movingly explore the nature of friendship, identity, death, time as a construct and the very nature of what acting is.It requires exceptional actors in the leading roles. Unfortunately Rude Mechanicals, a young, and Im assuming amateur group, dont even get close. To make this stuff work you have to have incomparable technique, particularly vocally. The young actors playing the unfortunate pair stumble and fumble their way around the text, on a couple of occasions actually prompting each other on stage. Theres little relief when other actors arrive. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern encounter a troupe of players on their way to Elsinore. These are the players who, in Hamlet, will perform the play within the play, which proves to the Danish prince that his Uncle killed his father and precipitates the tragedy. In Stoppards play they are effectively 'a comic pornographer and a band of prostitutes' who invite Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to 'get caught up in the action'. There is much brilliant comic writing in these scenes, but apart from a few titters at some sexual mimicry most of this went for nothing. Chief culprit is the actor playing the First Player, the comic pornographer. If you have to resort to mugging at the audience and strange noises at the end of each punch line then youre not really making the most of Stoppards sublime wit. The major characters from Hamlet all make appearances here, and all are sent up grotesquely, especially Gertrude, here played by a young man as some kind of demented alcoholic drag queen. Did the director not realise that the scenes from Hamlet have to be played absolutely straight and for truth for the rest of this play to work? One of the funniest moments in the piece is when Hamlet comes on and mutters 'to be or not to be, that is the question ', and Guildenstern remarks to Rosencrantz 'I cant for the life of me see how were going to get into conversation'. This exchange was cut from this production. Why? It cuts to the essence of what the play is about. In the last section of the play Stoppard plays a brilliant trick on the audience which comes to a profound conclusion as to what audiences expect from actors. For it to work it needs the First Player to 'die' convincingly in front of us. Needless to say this young actor sent the whole thing up, garnering a few more cheap giggles, but TOTALLY missing the point.Basically, did this group not realise what a gift to performers this script is? That Stoppard is a master craftsman? In perhaps the plays most poignant and moving moment, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern realise they have been duped by their royal friend and are on their way to execution in England, The Player was sitting in the audience chatting to someone in the front row. The moment passed for nothing; the climax fell flat. No matter, our actor had got some more cheap laughs.In fairness to this company the theatre was packed and applauded warmly, so maybe you should go and make up your own mind. If you want to get the full impact of this amazing script, however, you may do better to just read it. That way there will be no one in the way thinking they can improve on it.
