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Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Also see Susan's review of Cabaret
For people not familiar with the ins and outs of Hamlet, Rosencrantz (Romell Witherspoon) and Guildenstern (Adam Wesley Brown) are school friends of the Danish prince, summoned by his uncle Claudius (Craig Wallace) and mother Gertrude (Kimberly Schraf) to seek out the reason for Hamlet's melancholy and strange moods. They are two of life's bit players, hovering on the sidelines of great events and unable to make sense of them. Posner understands that playing with Hamlet involves dealing with a lot of baggage, so he sets the action in a cluttered attic (designed by Paige Hathaway) crammed with wooden thrones, goblets, pieces of scenery, piles of books and scripts, and numerous skulls, among other things. Stoppard's play moves into and out of scenes written by Shakespeare in a split second, highlighted by a momentary shift in Thom Weaver's lighting design from a warm yellow tone to pitiless white. Witherspoon and Brown are onstage virtually the entire length of the play, killing time by tossing coins or trying to figure out their roles in the ongoing drama. They are likable Everymen, by turns frustrated and exhilarated but never simply showy. They leave that to the royals and the traveling actors who surround them, specifically Ian Merrill Peakes' bombastic Player. To add another layer to the intrigues, Posner and his designers make sure the audience understands that everything they see is itself an artifice. Helen Q. Huang has costumed Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the players in vaguely contemporary clothes while using sheer, impractical fabrics for the residents of Elsinore. In other words, this production of a play about the nature of illusion is unambiguously presenting itself as a work of unreality. Folger Theatre
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