Friday

Almost a week ago, on Saturday, I saw three movies at AFI's Silver Theater* in Maryland. The last movie I saw that day was Tom Stoppard's existential ode to physics, fate, and probabilities, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990),* adapted from his own play of the same name (other movies I saw Saturday are mentioned here and here). Then yesterday, after waiting around the passport office all afternoon, I met Sunshine before the eight pm curtain at the Studio Theater* for the stage version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.... The story is an excellent, if unsubtle, contemplation of destiny's role, at least as pertains to Hamlet's childhood friends Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, newly recruited by the uncle-king of Denmark to spy on his nephew-heir, and, when that becomes fruitless, duped into being instruments of his would-be death. In Shakespeare's play, the characters are stunted to the point of being interchangeable and listless plot mechanisms bribed into extending the deceitful king's influence over his wife and stepson. The Stoppard play takes this situation and centralizes these listless mechanisms, creating a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dismayed at their own lack of influence as the forces of plot and dramatic tragedy leave them with only whatever dubious free will they can cram between the lines of Hamlet. Mostly they fritter this will away discovering what's happening around them. On stage, they ponder philosophy in their interstices. On screen they also discover important points of physics. They never quite solve the troubling riddle of their lives: that they are, in the end, inextricably bound by their passing use at the hands of Claudius, Hamlet, and ultimately, Shakespeare himself. I was surprised that the shorter movie version included so much more of Hamlet framing Stoppard's scenes. I prefer the movie, but the play was very good. [Cavin]