Summary 
A fascinating outdoor production, performed in repertory staging with the same cast and costuming as in the Festival's Hamlet. Stoppard's play turns Hamlet inside out, with the titular characters caught up in royal intrigue at Elsinore but confused and only able to stand ineffectually by, musing on fate and death, as the characters and events from Hamlet whirl around them. Effective in its own right, and bordering on brilliant in relation to its night by night "sister" production.
Design
Directed by Calvin MacLean. Costumes by Tona Schenk. Set by John Stark. Lights by J. William Ruyle. Sound by Roderick Peeples.
Cast
Joyce Thi Brew (Ophelia), Susan D'Autremont (Gertrude), Anthony Irons (Horatio), Timothy Kane (Guildenstern), Michael Littman (Claudius), Michael Milligan (Hamlet), Patrick New (Rosencrantz), Patrick O'Gara (Polonius), Roderick Peeples (1st Player), Martin Yurek (Laertes).
Analysis
At the press conference for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival's twentieth anniversary season, artistic director Calvin MacLean described Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (R&G) as the story of "a couple of blokes" who "don't know why they're caught up in all this tragedy." MacLean not only presents playwright Tom Stoppard's deceptively simple story, with all its reflections and commentaries on Hamlet, he also offers some playful observations on his own Festival.
Performed in repertory with Hamlet, R&G utilizes the identical cast and roles, and with a few modifications, the same costumes and scenery. The same modern Hamlet clothing is worn in R&G except for the title characters, who seem old-fashioned and out of place in drably colored Elizabethan doublet and hose. Even the garish Day of the Dead costumes reappear in R&G, and Guildenstern comments on them with a characteristically dry impression of being "ambushed by a grotesque."
The set for the two productions is identical - a plain stage sparsely adorned with rickety and skewed ladder-like lumber - except for the third act of R&G. This last scene, set aboard the ship bound for England, is staged with three heavy barrels elevated at center stage and a yardarm extended from a platform high above the gallery. Twin billowing sails fall from the yardarm to the first row of the audience, draping and concealing the entire stage. A red and white flag of Denmark flies from its side at the top of a pole high above the yardarm. The flag looks ominously like a crucifix over the expanse of shroud from which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern emerge.
Stoppard's play, like Hamlet, presents melancholy philosophy and musings on death, chaos and fate. In Hamlet, the Prince is the philosopher and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are excessive and shallow courtiers, while in R&G the title characters are the philosophers and Hamlet and the royal court are portrayed as self-absorbed, melodramatic fools. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the heroes, doomed to become tragic victims. Snippets of scenes from Hamlet are presented in disjointed vignettes that are familiar to the audience but only confuse and frustrate Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The two young men reveal themselves as hesitant and unsure of their course of action, just as the Prince is in Hamlet. For example, after the Prince kills Polonius, they are instructed to apprehend Hamlet, but they debate on who should search in which direction, whether they should part or stay together, and whether or not they should arm themselves, until they finally just remain where they were, and announce, "now we're getting somewhere."
Hamlet, again played by Michael Milligan, is portrayed as vain and childish. He first appears before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with Ophelia, and the two young lovers bound across stage, screaming and tearing at their clothing, before exiting through the audience, still crying out foolishly in a parody of themselves. During the sail to England, the Prince reclines in a deck side lounge chair, sipping a martini beneath a sunshade and reading a paperback book. He wears dark sunglasses and a Walkman headset, and when he rises to pass Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he croons the lyrics from the Oasis song "Wonderwall," another echo from the Festival's Hamlet. Hamlet's slick shallowness contrasts with the depth and melancholy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in an ironic reversal. The two realize they are fated to imminent death and despondently consider their options in a situation in which they have no control, while the affected Hamlet is simply oblivious.
Patrick New and Timothy Kane star in the title roles as the endearingly confused Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, respectively. With their quicksilver timing and chemistry, depth and abundant humor, they manage to alternate with seamless execution from Laurel and Hardy-like slapstick to morbid considerations of fate.
Before the production begins, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are perched at opposite ends of the gallery, looking weary and bored while the audience takes their seats. They interact throughout the play primarily with the First Player, portrayed by Roderick Peeples, who doubles as sound designer, and his traveling troupe of sordid "actors." The troupe is played by members of the Festival's Acting Associates, students from Illinois State University who supplement the Acting Company and fill in smaller roles. As part of the Festival green show, this same group of actors plays the "15-minute Hamlet" preceding each performance of R&G on a small stage in the Ewing Manor courtyard.
The tragedians roll onstage in a lumbering and oversized cart that barely fits upon the ramps that approach the stage from the audience. The cumbersome cart looms and wobbles, then unfolds ingeniously into a small, curtained stage with two players already concealed "backstage." Their dumb show - here the ironic tale of how a prince has two supposed friends killed instead of him - concludes with a blackout as the two masked friends fall dead onstage. In a striking foreshadowing, when the lights come back up, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are asleep exactly where the actors playing their deaths had fallen.
Kane and New trade rapid barbs during their sound effect-enhanced coin toss game, degenerate into good-natured swordplay as their contest of "questions" concludes, and share exasperation each time their names are confused and reversed. New's Rosencrantz seems flustered from trying too hard to think, while Kane's Guildenstern seems infuriated from not being able to stop thinking so hard.
New presents a physical, playful Stan Laurel-type as Rosencrantz, swinging his arms in a gangly looseness to await the next round of questions, flat on his back and waving his booted feet when instructed to relax, and delivering an exasperating, "Oh!" after a full one-minute pause as he finally realizes what Guildenstern was talking about. For a large part of the play he stands open-mouthed or frowning in perplexity. As Guildenstern, Kane presents a seething and intellectual Oliver Hardy-type, whether it is his twitching exasperation at Rosencrantz's slow wits ("delve!"), a painfully slow reach for his sword as a psychotic Hamlet rails at him, or his progression as New muses on whether it is best to be dead or alive within a coffin: first his hands clench into fists, then he begins to fume and shake, until finally he draws his sword and shouts, "I'm going to kill you."
The technically challenging final act takes place aboard ship. Guildenstern's yearning for a "sustained bit of action" is abruptly answered by the terrified cry of, "Pirates!" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern scramble amid a flurry of flashing lights and exploding flash pots, and they finally conceal themselves within the barrels at stage center. When they emerge, along with the First Player from the other barrel, they realize Hamlet is gone, as is their credibility before the King of England.
During a blackout the stage again becomes concealed within the ship sails, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are then revealed, brightly backlit from the high platform so their shadows are shown on a scrim that conceals the highest part of the stage. Their hands are bound behind them, and they have a hangman's nooses around their necks. The two face away from the audience and speak in hushed tones of panic. Their pitiful cry is rending: "We didn't hurt anyone!" Another sudden blackout is accompanied with the sound effects of the gallows door opening and the creaking of a straining wooden beam as they are hanged. The curtains that cover the stage are pulled again, and when the lights come up, the post-mortem finale of Hamlet is revealed, with Hamlet and Laertes, Osric, Claudius and Gertrude all in their familiar sprawls onstage. The gauze-wrapped and tightly bound dummy "corpses" of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dangle from the yardarm upstage. The gauze and rope recall the ghosts of the Festival's Hamlet, as do the opening strains from "A Murder of One," by Counting Crows, that rise in volume and signal the end of the production.
Kane and New return to the stage in a triumphant curtain call, and before they depart with jubilant waves, they pause to turn and give characteristically horrified glances at the dangling bodies of their characters. Their performances, under MacLean's keen direction, transform this intellectual exercise and Hamlet parody into biting comedy as well as an intense observation on death and fate. Where Stoppard's play takes Hamlet by the ankles and spins him upside down, MacLean, along with New and Kane, take over and give the melancholy Dane a furious and funny shaking by the feet.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.15, No.4, Fall 1997.