"Who would have thought we were so important," one of the actors remarks at the end of Wendell Theatre's new production of Tom Stoppard's play Rosen-crantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Indeed: In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the two vanish almost as quickly as they appear. However, Stoppard has turned the two figures' predicament into an existential-and funny-reflection on the nature of truth and being: Throughout the two-and-a-half-hour show, the eponymous protagonists are trying to figure out who they are, whence they come and whither they are going, all to no avail. In the process, they encounter most of the characters from Shakespeare's original, though in very different versions.
Director Paul Arenson sets his production to a sparse stage, which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (both played by women, for no discernable reason) don't leave for the entire duration of the play-quite a feat for Sarah Bagley and Katie Connor. However, it is Zack Armfield as The Player who steals the stage as the only performer to catch the various levels of Stoppard's incredibly smart and witty play, taking it beyond comedy to real drama.
-By Norbert Schürer
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