Cornstock produced Tom Stoppard’s play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” at its Winter Playhouse in upper Bradley Park during the middle two weekends of January. The play has become a classic of modern theater and won a Tony and New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for best play in 1968. It has been made into a film and is frequently revived in professional and amateur productions often in tandem with productions of “Hamlet” on which it is very loosely based. Mr. Stoppard, a British playwright, is one of our most successful and respected living playwrights in the English speaking theater and his works also enjoy countless productions in translation worldwide. His screenplay for “Shakespeare In Love” won an Oscar in 1998 and the film won Best Picture.

To brush up our Shakespeare: the title of the play in question is spoken by the English Ambassador who arrives at Elsinore castle amid a scene of death and carnage in the final moments of “Hamlet” to announce, as the (now dead) King requested, that indeed “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.” These two minor characters (henceforth R and G, to save ink and trees) are used by the Bard to further develop one of his main themes in “Hamlet,” that of betrayal.

Hamlet betrays R and G by rewriting the letter from the King so that they are executed. R and G betray their childhood friend by spying on him and reporting his behavior and mood to the King in the hope of receiving some financial reward for their trouble. Mr. Stoppard further clarifies their perfidy by removing ambiguity in Shakespeare’s play by showing them reading the original letter from the King that includes the order to the King of England to execute Hamlet. R and G rationalize their acquiescence to this execution by essentially taking the “just following orders” defense. Confused?

Mr. Stoppard adds to the confusion of his two characters to the extent their feelings, names, identities, loyalties, thoughts and conversations become unintelligible and grind into silence and eventually terror. The blur of life slowly comes into focus, and they realize they are in grave danger but have absolutely no idea how or why. They have difficulty remembering the past and little understanding of the present. The play “Hamlet” swirls about them but as lesser characters they have little understanding or a “worm’s eye” of what the plot is. It is this exploration of their condition that makes Mr. Stoppard’s play an example of  “theater of the absurd,” a genre developed following the atomic blast at Hiroshima when we understood that we possessed the means to exterminate our species. The absurdist critique is that if nuclear warfare is the result of “rational” behavior then who is to say that life has some understandable meaning?

Mr. Stoppard’s play is sometimes compared to Samuel Beckett’s, “Waiting for Godot” (1953) which is one of the first examples of absurdist theater. Again two characters, Didi and Gogo, amid a post apocalyptic landscape, sit, consider and attempt to understand their condition. Reality, memory, existence are all tenuous for these characters and if we have the ability to look at our present moment with detachment we can understand our own confusion over what constitutes reality. Are taxes too high or too low? Is global warming real and man made or just a hoax to punish the fossil fuel companies? Are unionized state workers or the financialization of the economy the cause of our State’s economic woes? Will the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement add to economic inequality and a weakening of sovereignty or will it be the panacea to cure our foreign trade deficits? These are just a few areas of disagreement and confusion we face. There are many more. The absurdists would ask why we think our plays must portray life with such certainty?

Regrettably this past production at Cornstock was not very interesting. The casting and staging were confused, the pacing was leaden, diction, projection and delivery all weak and even the presence of some very accomplished actors could not revive this moribund production. However, that does not mean it was entirely unsuccessful. A group of young actors, directors, designers and crew came together to attempt a very complex and difficult piece of theater and that was the original vision for Cornstock’s winter season. I am sure they all grew and developed as theater workers more on this project than on many simpler, less demanding ones and I look forward to more theater from these young practitioners.