Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

by Tom Stoppard

seen at the Old Vic on 29 March 2017

David Leveaux directs the 50th anniversary revival of Tom Stoppard's first great hit, playing in the theatre where it was first performed in London after transferring from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of 1966, with Daniel Radcliffe playing Rosencrantz, Joshua McGuire playing Guildenstern, and David Haig the Player King.

The two main characters are mere extras in Hamlet, their fate sealed somewhat callously by the prince when he rewrites  letter leading to their undeserved execution at the English court. In Stoppard's play, everything depends on their chemistry, as they struggle with uncertainties about their past, with their entanglement in Danish court politics, with the significance of their own lives, and even with remembering their own names (not helped by the tendency of almost everyone else to confuse them).

In this production Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire make a great double act, the first a bit nervy but happy to try to ride the present moment, the second more speculative, more determined to try to impose meaning on what is happening. The players erupt into their lives with a stunning performance by David Haig of overwhelming theatricality, supported by a carnivalesque troupe who hardly say a word.

In Trevor Nunn's 2011 production with Samuel Barnett as Ros and Jamie Parker as Guil, I found the relationship between the two, and their final predicament, more moving. I think this is because Samuel Barnett played a more needy and dependent Rosencrantz. Where he was deeply frightened, Daniel Radcliffe is both more controlled and more panicky. Interestingly, he also comes across as intensely likeable. It's a wonderful performance, allowing for a really satisfying contrast with Joshua McGuire's more cerebral Guildenstern. Their physical confidence in one another, exemplified not least in the fact that almost all the coin tossing involves Radcliffe actually catching the coins, and their comic timing in the set piece routines such as the question-and-answer match, and in so much else, is a real joy to watch. 

Perhaps here the existential ruminations outweigh the more personal sense of waste and loss, accounting for the difference in my emotional reactions; but this is a very fine and at times hugely funny production of a modern classic.