Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Great casting, great acting. Timothy Edward Kane, always a favorite, well paired with Sean Fortunato. Clever stage design.













From the Time Out review:

"Stoppard’s 1967 breakout play, a backdoor inversion of Hamlet by way of Waiting for Godot, remains an ingenious enterprise. Rosencrantz (Fortunato) and Guildenstern (Kane)—or is it the other way around?—are mere pawns on the fringes of Elsinore, used and abused by Claudius and Hamlet (not to mention Big Willie) as means to an end to which the poor schmucks are never privy.

Halberstam’s handsome production nicely emphasizes Stoppard’s conceptual trickery. Collette Pollard’s smart scenic design suggests a metaphysical backstage; the play’s Hamlet cast cleverly plays its scenes upstage, to a backdrop of a sprawling auditorium several times the size of Writers’ intimate space, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ruminate in the foreground. The cast is pitch-perfect: Longtime associates Kane and Fortunato have the kind of easy comic rapport that’s earned, not faked, on top of a remarkable facility with Stoppard’s quicksilver wordplay and intellectual rhythms. Gilmore radiates energy as the grandiose and mildly sinister leader of the tragedians. The only questionable step is Halberstam and sound designer Andrew Hansen’s use of new wave rock songs like “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime” as act bumpers. After all, Stoppard’s play seems to illustrate that even the least among us are more than talking heads.