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Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern Are Dead
(1991) __________________________________________________________________ Imagine Hamlet told from the slightly befuddled points of view of poor, doomed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern--or is it Guildenstern and Rosencrantz?--two sublime Nobodies who, willy-nilly, become pawns in Claudius' and Hamlet's schemes to outfox one another. This film, written and directed by Tom Stoppard {and based on Stoppard's hit stage play}, is a delightful but slightly dark comedy that explores the theme of Fate vs. Free Will in a theatrical universe for which the Playwright {in our case, Shakespeare...or is it Stoppard?} stands in for God. It would be an interesting study {if some scholar of Shakespearean performance practice hasn't already tackled it, that is} to speculate on the influence which Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead has had on productions of Hamlet, both on stage and on the screen. For example, it would be difficult for most directors, I suspect, having once been exposed to Stoppard''s point of view, to resist the temptation to emphasize the comical interchangeability of R and G, as when the pair first present themselves to Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet, Act II, scene 2:. KING Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern. QUEEN Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz Even though the text clearly indicates that Claudius has met the pair, he nonetheless gets them mixed up in Stoppard's version of the scene, leading Gertrude to speak her lines as a sort of a gentle correction. In fact, this reading has since been used in many productions of Hamlet, and never fails to get a laugh--which may well be what Shakespeare intended. The BBC TV production starring Derek Jacobi used this interpretation to great effect, and even went so far as to have Hamlet himself get his schoolfellows confused when they first come before him. In R & G, Stoppard takes the joke even further by having the sweet but bumbling Rosencrantz {Gary Oldman, right?} refer to himself as "Guildenstern" from time to time, only to be corrected by the somewhat cannier Guildenstern. Stoppard probably didn't introduce this reading of Act II, scene2. Indeed, the text quoted above would almost seem to demand it; but it reminds me of one Hamlet commentator {whose name, alas, escapes me}, who described the unhappy pair as so pathetically incomplete as human beings (or at least as characters) that even together, they did not quite make one whole man. It may also prove that Stoppard's Rashomon-like fiddling with perspective in this play has had an even greater influence on contemporary readings of Hamlet's reliability as an observer of events. Earlier interpreters, it would appear, had a far greater tendency to take Hamlet's point of view as gospel; but since Stoppard {and right along, no doubt, with our postmodern tendencies to skepticism of all sorts} Hamlet's opinion is no longer sacrosanct when it comes to, for instance, judgments about his uncle Claudius, who, though clearly a murderer, may not be the drunkard, lecher, and "king of shreds and patches" which Hamlet would have us see. Last but not least, I'd also like to think that Stoppard's marvelously witty and entertaining play has been one of the foremost inspirations for the resurgence of interest in Shakespeare these last few decades, and that well before Kenneth Branagh or Shakespeare in Love. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is probably Stoppard's best-known and most-produced work. It was first performed by the Oxford Theatre Group in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 24, 1966. The director was Brian Daubney, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were played by David Marks and Clive Cable, respectively. This lovely little film version starred the then relatively unknown actors Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, and included the multi-faceted Richard Dreyfuss as the First Player. It won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award. CAST:
Rosencrantz.....Gary Oldman
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