Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead flips the script on Hamlet, focusing on two minor characters bewildered by the events unfolding around them. Summoned by the King to figure out what's wrong with Hamlet, they find themselves lost in a world where a flipped coin always comes down heads, and pirates are occupational hazard.

Rosencrantz (Alex Comstock) and Guildenstern (Thomas Dimmick) stumble towards their inevitable demise, grappling with their lack of control and purpose in a story they don't even understand. Standing in contrast is a mysterious Player (Jeff Watkins) whose macabre antics point to a sticky end for our unlucky duo. Stoppard's play might just be the most hilarious exploration of fate, free will, and the nature of reality, that our stage has ever seen.

Directed by GRADS president Tony Petani, this production will take place in the open air of the New Fortune Theatre, the southern hemisphere’s only permanent replica-Elizabethan theatre.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was first staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 by the Oxford Theatre Group, and it premiered in London at the Old Vic in 1967. The Broadway production was nominated for eight Tony Awards and won four, including for Best Play. It also won Best Play from the New York Drama Critics Circle and Outstanding Production from the Outer Critics Circle. The New York Times called it, “very funny, very brilliant, very chilling.”

8-11 & 15-18 October at 7.30pm
New Fortune Theatre, UWA