Rosencrantz and Guildenstern may be dead but Krishna Omkar’s lively production is far from it. As the show begins, the sunlight, which flows downwards into the O’Reilly theatre is blocked off by the lofty shutters and so the viewers are plunged into the gloomy sub-reality of the play.
The black and white setting of the chessboard stage conveys well the powerlessness felt by the main characters, pawns in this game, doomed from the outset by their Shakespearean precursors.
Guildenstern (William Spray) begins to pursue his questions of identity and reality in protracted musings delivered in a dry and lofty yet intense persona. As he builds into his performance, his sharp changes of mood and volume, touching on the aggressive, convey his anxieties and command attention.
Rosencrantz (Liam Wells), while the less troubled of the duo, delivers a more energetic, although controlled performance, bringing life to the stage. The coupling is a success, with genuine engagement between the two actors adding to the overall fluctuating chemistry of the relationship.
Tom Carlisle also shines, in what is a belting performance as ‘the player’, developing an aloof style which he applies with versatility to his changing fortune in the ideological battle between fiction and reality.
It is this tension in the plot which helps make it a success with every character at risk of being fictionalized. The use of Hamlet’s play within a play within this show gives it an extra layer of reference (becoming meta-meta-theatre?).
Clever use of light gives extra meaning: the brilliant white for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s strivings for answers suggests clarity is present in their uncertainty. By contrast, scenes relating to the parent play’s plot are undermined by the dimmer sepia yellow, rendering the familiar uncomfortable.
If the audience watch this show with detatchment, they risk leaving having enjoyed only mild intellectual flattery to the extent they follow Stoppard’s witticisms. Krishna Omkar’s production clinches this aspect: making the audience face each other from opposing blocks, they sit at the fringes of the characters’ perception and are asked to rethink whether they are the spectators or the spectated.
Through this they also share their response, which, promisingly, consists of much laughter and enthusiastic applause, with each other. At the close of the show the audience find the play’s unsettling and surreal gloom has seeped into the night and haunts their homeward steps.
Four stars.
