Drama
Tom Stoppard's celebration of wit and wordplay takes place in a theatrical purgatory. We are presented a play half-way between the world of the original Hamlet and some places it never touches on.
We watch Hamlet's friends Rosencrantz (Sam Sampson) and Guildenstern (Rick Merrick) playing their parts in the Hamlet story - sent to the court to heal the 'too much changed' prince - but we also watch the story never depicted in that play. This is Hamlet on the stage and Hamlet in the wings.
In the barest terms, Stoppard has brought forward two of the original play's more minor characters and built a clever post-modern comedy around them. He has created a surreal and unfamiliar place where we no longer have the assured sense of purpose that our established canonical characters do. A sense of dislocation pervades the minimalist set, and the protagonists speak for us when they ask 'What's the game?/What are the rules?'
The ingenious premise allows for plenty of tart observations about arguably Shakespeare's greatest single play. Gertrude is played as a spaced-out Hollywood housewife, Hamlet himself (in a witty piece of cross-casting) a teenage girl, caked in Goth make-up and the sort of jewellery bought on a Sunday in Camden.
No longer is something rotten in the state of Denmark - rather 'the very air stinks'. These touches are as cheeky as a painted moustache on the Mona Lisa. And they work.
But the titular duo is the focus of the piece. Put crudely they are a diametrical pair: where Guildenstern worries, Rosencrantz laughs. Guildenstern questions life and Rosencrantz accepts it. Guildenstern strokes his beard - Rosencrantz bites his nails.
The contrasts Stoppard sets up are played particularly well. If suspense is built by one character, it is demolished by the other and the resulting conversational pas de deux is a joy to watch. The performances are perhaps a little unbalanced: Merrick seems more comfortable as the ponderous cynical Guildenstern, than Sampson does as the buffonish Rosencrantz - though his performance is as affable and charming as any you'll see this term.
Burton-Morgan has tried to emphasise the play's many allusions to Beckett, but Stoppard's duo are oddly more connected to Hal and Falstaff than to Estragon and Vlad. Indeed, during the odd moments of brace-twanging, slapstick humour, they might just as well be Laurel and Hardy.
What binds Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as does these other desperate partnerships, is fear of isolation. Each one needs a spectator partner to justify their existence. When Guildenstern cracks in Act II and asks his friend what they have in common 'but our situation?' it is a moment of intense personal honesty. Such moments punctuate this production, providing time off from the overt theatricality that characterises the rest of it.
Thus, though the play often seems about to collapse under the sheer weight of Stoppard's intellectualising - the opening few minutes alone contain references to logical syllogisms and the theory of probability - the production's wit, verve and physical comedy bring it back.
In short, then, this is a lively and thoughtful production, boasting some terrific performances - the energy and chutzpah Colin Burnie gives the Player stands out even for an actor noted for his talent and enthusiasm. In three acts we are shown existential sophistry, bleak comedy, literary in-jokes and lots of juggling. Find another night in Oxford which offers all that.
It's ten years since Kevin Elyot's My Night With Reg was first performed, but Simon Tavener's revival demonstrates that its relevance has hardly diminished since its sensational Royal Court debut.
The play examines the relationships of six gay friends, revolving around the anxious and unfulfilled Guy, whose flat is the setting. "Sometimes I'd rather be fancied than liked", he observes. Hanging over the play is the shadow of Reg, killed by AIDS before the second scene, with whom most of the friends have been involved. The play deals with their complicated, heated and often comic responses to the death.
Wisely, Elyot approaches AIDS using coarse humour as a way of avoiding the mawkishness that could blight the treatment of such a theme. The acting is solid, and although the claustrophobic bickering of the friends can grate after a while, the understated performances of James Bounds (Guy) and Michael Reed (John) are impressive. Frank Brinkley as wide-eyed northern barman Eric is an antidote to the other more metropolitan characters. A commendable revival.
Arthur Miller's The Price comes to the Oxford Playhouse this week - it's your best chance to see Warren Mitchell (Alf Garnett from Til Death Us Do Part) playing the 90-year-old Solomon. With rave reviews from its West End run, it's got to be worth a visit.
If you're a fan of modern dance, book your tickets now for next week's Playhouse events, which include a brief visit from the 'legendary' Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
In London, the autumn season is getting underway, and not all the best work is at the big venues. If you're a fan of the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey, you might want to make a trip to the Tricycle to see The Shadow of a Gunman. At the National Theatre, there's an unusual selection of plays, including Matthew Warchus's production of Sam Shepard's 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Buried Child, playing at the Lyttleton. At the Cottesloe is another new production: Antony Sher stars as the prisoner Primo Levi in Primo, adapted from the wonderful novel If This is a Man. Also there are a few performances left of Stephen Sondheim's musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
I'll certainly be heading to the Donmar Warehouse to see Euripides' Hecuba, and it may be worth going to Cambridge's Arts Theatre this week for the triennial Cambridge Greek Play - this year, Oedipus, performed in Greek.
14th Oct 2004