Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
1996. Year 11. My memory of that year is that it was always overcast. When I try to think of sunlight all I remember is the girl I had a huge crush on at the time, her face was never in shadow. It was the year my chronic fatigue was at its worst and life was all a bit hard and confusing.
It was also a transformative year. I wrote most of our drama class’s recreation of the Eureka Stockade, I studied Hamlet and I discovered Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Suddenly, amidst the bleak mists of illness teenage and addlement I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to write plays.
I don’t think I can overestimate the impact Ros & Guil had on me at the time. It was hilarious and demonstrated a high level of wit, but it also had these speeches of philosophical quandaries. Quite simply it was breathtaking and life-changing.
But I never saw it performed – live anyway and the film is a different beast, still brilliant but different, and well, it’s a film so it can’t be the same; Ros & Guil is about characters in the wings of a play, it’s quintessentially theatre. So when my good friend and fellow raving loon Ash Walker offered me a ticket to the opening night of the new STC production … insert mad acceptance here.
I had one reservation – I’ve never been a Tim Minchin fan and he was going to be Rosencrantz. But, I was willing to chance it. And it’s a good thing I did. The production is quite simply fantastic. Tim played a somewhat dimmer Rosencrantz than I expected but he was nonetheless fitted and fully the character for that. The repartee between him and Toby Schmitz was flawless and the pair of them had an energy that carried the play along to each terrifying moment of nothing that inevitably followed every chaotic moment of action.
The rest of the cast was equally strong, particularly the players who had the right amount of knockabout comedy and the Shakespearean characters were the stereotypical ‘Shakespearean’ and brilliantly overdone which juxtaposed nicely with the ‘reality’ of Ros and Guil’s situation.
There’s much more sunlight in my life these days and the girl’s face has been replaced by my beautiful wife’s, but Stoppard’s influence remains. Whatever I end up achieving as a writer and in whatever field it is, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will always be one of the underlying influences and its discovery will always be remembered by me as a major turning point in my life.
I’m now remembering all the stuff I’ve read of Stoppard saying art isn’t important and his plays just entertainment, nothing more. Well Sir Tom, you were wrong on that one, I know that much and right now the wind is southerly.
Keep dreaming.
It was also a transformative year. I wrote most of our drama class’s recreation of the Eureka Stockade, I studied Hamlet and I discovered Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Suddenly, amidst the bleak mists of illness teenage and addlement I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to write plays.
I don’t think I can overestimate the impact Ros & Guil had on me at the time. It was hilarious and demonstrated a high level of wit, but it also had these speeches of philosophical quandaries. Quite simply it was breathtaking and life-changing.
But I never saw it performed – live anyway and the film is a different beast, still brilliant but different, and well, it’s a film so it can’t be the same; Ros & Guil is about characters in the wings of a play, it’s quintessentially theatre. So when my good friend and fellow raving loon Ash Walker offered me a ticket to the opening night of the new STC production … insert mad acceptance here.
I had one reservation – I’ve never been a Tim Minchin fan and he was going to be Rosencrantz. But, I was willing to chance it. And it’s a good thing I did. The production is quite simply fantastic. Tim played a somewhat dimmer Rosencrantz than I expected but he was nonetheless fitted and fully the character for that. The repartee between him and Toby Schmitz was flawless and the pair of them had an energy that carried the play along to each terrifying moment of nothing that inevitably followed every chaotic moment of action.
The rest of the cast was equally strong, particularly the players who had the right amount of knockabout comedy and the Shakespearean characters were the stereotypical ‘Shakespearean’ and brilliantly overdone which juxtaposed nicely with the ‘reality’ of Ros and Guil’s situation.
There’s much more sunlight in my life these days and the girl’s face has been replaced by my beautiful wife’s, but Stoppard’s influence remains. Whatever I end up achieving as a writer and in whatever field it is, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will always be one of the underlying influences and its discovery will always be remembered by me as a major turning point in my life.
I’m now remembering all the stuff I’ve read of Stoppard saying art isn’t important and his plays just entertainment, nothing more. Well Sir Tom, you were wrong on that one, I know that much and right now the wind is southerly.
Keep dreaming.
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