where is the wind going? how does she feel?

From October 13 to October 15, the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe is presenting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in the Lerner Black Box. Staff Writer Tamara Barriot reviews their production.

Sylvia Korman’s (BC ‘18) take on Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead sheds a new light into the meditative, almost absurd, nature of the piece. The KCST performance last night at Lerner’s Black Box left the audience wondering if chance dictates the course of all our lives.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a glimpse behind the scenes of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The play revolves around Hamlet’s childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and their conversations and ramble-on meditations as they answer the call of Queen Gertrude (Sarah Pitts, CC’17) and King Claudius (Will Fleming, CC’20). These range on a variety of topics, however they tend to end centering on the absurdity of life, the idea of a sealed fate, and the notion that life and death are the same thing.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern begin the play with a coin-tossing game and a confounded reflection on luck. Does chance actually exist, or is everything determined by set probabilities? This might as well be a comment on the existence (or non-existence) of free will. Both Rose Meriam (CC ‘19) and Karinya Ghiara (CC’19) were outstanding in their performances as the titular characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern respectively. Meriam adding a childlike flustered quality to the character, which made every other line hilarious, while Ghiara consistently portrayed a sense of philosophical calmness.

As the play goes on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern encounter a troupe of actors, terrible actors, in fact, who put on plays on “blood, love, and rhetoric.” They serve to situate, in a way, the less Shakespeare-savvy people in Hamlet’s timeline and again to comment on the oddness of life, or in the player’s words, that “uncertainty is the normal state, you [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] are not special people.” Carolyn Kegel (CC ’17) steals the show, as in Broadway’s cliché, with her stellar performance, portraying The Player not only as comical but also absurd, aloof, annoyed, and even desperate at times. The player is a washed-out director who seems to evade reality through acting, and Kegel is able to portray this in a way that’s almost tangible to the audience.

Hamlet as a character is really not much of one in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, with only a few lines scattered throughout the play. Jet Harper (BC ‘19) portrays the Danish prince like an angsty teenager eating potato chips instead of a truly deranged individual seeking vengeance. This, however, helps to convey Korman’s reflection on the play: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are constrained by a system that’s larger than them; which is Hamlet. The fact that he is such a weak character only adds to that hopeless sense of the absurdity of life.

Moreover, lighting designer Elizabeth Schweitzer (BC ‘18) plays with lighting to accentuate the duality of the play. During most of the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s meditations are seen through a white light which shifts to a softer golden one as soon as any character enters the scene. This conveys a feeling of odd intimacy between the characters, they’re able to finish each other’s sentences, they’re amused by the same things even if these keep repeating themselves; almost as if they’re the same person. This sense of mirrored personalities between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is reinforced by the rapid rhetoric and odd games played between them; the audience, through the presentation of the play, has the sense that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern each inhabit the other’s mind.

Korman chooses to present the piece in a minimalistic way, with almost no scenery and dressing the actors with everyday clothes, a possible commentary on how the questions posed by Stoppard in ‘66 have as much relevance today as when first asked; is life really absurd? Are we all product of circumstances? The “costumes” clash at times with the few props onstage; the old travel trunks, background scenery for most of the show, are used in the final scenes and create a certain epoch dissonance.

Korman and Simpson turned Stoppard’s almost action-less script into a vivid play, combining witty lines, with certain dramatic (if a bit exaggerated) character actions on stage. A few sudden shrieks followed by senseless explanations reminded me of all those moments when life seems to be spinning with no direction, taking you (victim of circumstances) on a journey you didn’t sign up for. Though Stoppard’s work is not for everyone, the show is wonderfully put together and leaves us questioning how much of what we do is really meaningful.

finger pointing via KCST