Review: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead – Theatre Royal, Haymarket ****
Once hummed with promise and delight. Trevor Nunn’s rarefied production is a reverent affair which wears its intellect on its sleeve, no detraction there, but at times the sparkle and wit appears mere verbiage, and the elegant writing has, over the years and with repeated viewing, lost its light.Shining brightly however, in the pairing of original History Boys Jamie Parker and Samuel Barnett, Nunn has scored a theatrical coup, their banter is effortless, their relationship forged deeply, peppered with affection and a harried familiarity. Parker is impressive as the saturnine Rosencrantz, all baritone and bluff, while Barnett snipes cuttingly as the more angular Guildenstern. They are present on stage almost throughout the piece, and never for one moment does it feel as if they have overstayed their welcome. Both explore the necessary pathos of their characters while never seeming to wallow in their uselessness. These are observers, never participants.
As The Player, Chris Andrew Mellon offers a darkly camp comic creation, intensely theatrical but as contrast he intelligently colours the camp with a deep-seated melancholy. A Pagliaccio Player, perhaps. Jack Hawkins gives a witty and rugged Hamlet, complementing beautifully the vacillating Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Nunn’s direction is tight throughout, a confluent unification of the intimate and the epic. Here, his understanding of staging intimacy on the vast space of the Haymarket heightens the existential ponderings of the characters.
Simon Higlett’s set is beautifully muted and understated, seeming to overshadow the actors while never quite filling the space, while Tim Mitchell’s lighting design moves seamlessly from bold and audacious slashes of white to subtle and intimate burnishings.
The overall effect is polished, solid and controlled. The precision and detail can often seem distancing and at times it is laboured rather than light, but this is a masterly revival, with enough flair and polish to lift it from a too-reverent production, and if nothing else, secures Parker and Barnett’s places as among the strongest dramatic actors of their generation.
Rosencrantz And Guildenstern - News
Twenty-five years ago Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead upturned, undermined, surprised. A below-stairs history, an animated analysis of Shakespeare, it looked at the question of to be or not from the point of characters whose
Launching Stoppard onto the theatrical world stage, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead once hummed with promise and delight. Trevor Nunn's rarefied production is a reverent affair which wears its intellect on its sleeve, no detraction there,
But Tom Stoppard's dialogue - especially in the exchanges between the two main characters - RosenCrantz and Guildenstern - is, for the most part, tedious. Apparently, director Trevor Nunn discovered the play among a pile of unproduced manuscripts early
The venue's summer festival opened with the musical She Loves Me before moving on this week to the opening of Tom Stoppard's surreal Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Directed by Trevor Nunn this lively revival was engrossing from the beginning
After the first night of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the National Theatre in 1967, Tom Stoppard awoke and found himself famous. It's still a delightful shock, every few years, to be reminded how brilliant and engaging this play remains,
The Stage / Reviews / Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
After the opening at the Old Vic in 1967, Stoppard awoke, like Lord Byron, and found himself famous. The attendant courtiers, too, find themselves caught up in a world elsewhere - Hamlet, no less - while contemplating the triviality of their own existence and testing the laws of logic and possibility by tossing coins and waxing philosophical.
They make Hamlet himself, of course, look like a novice self-dramatiser, Samuel Barnett sighing with dismay as Jack Hawkins’ melancholic prince launches into yet another soliloquy. Barnett’s Rosencrantz is a revelation - gangly, wide-eyed, snappy and camp, leaving the existential hand-wringing to Jamie Parker’s four-square, obsessively reasonable Guildenstern.
It’s a great double act in Trevor Nunn’s spirited revival, the second production in his season as guest director at the Haymarket. The show’s sharpened considerably since the Chichester opening in May, Simon Higlett’s modified designs gloriously complemented in the colourful costumes of Fotini Dimou.
Then, understudy Chris Andrew Mellon looked overparted as Tim Curry’s replacement as the Player, but he’s come into his own as a somewhat shifty, overweening actor laddie, light years away from the inimitable Graham Crowden in the role.
Tim Mitchell’s lighting isolates the reluctant heroes in spots in the void which the show then invades, like some vivid dream marching through Beckett. Hamlet is always going on somewhere, but the real drama is inside our own heads, and death is our only friend. With age, the play sounds gloomier. But its flashing wit remains undiminished.
I am ironing. And watching Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. 
I posted the wrong link for the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern link, it's obviously at the Haymarket: 
Hello, is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really playing at the V&A
Very excited about 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead', the classic Stoppard play, on now: 
How did I not see that a new production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was around?Rosencrantz And Guildenstern - Bookshelf
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead
Two minor characters from "Hamlet" offer a novel view of the melancholy DaneRosencrantz And Guildenstern
ROSENCRANTZ To sleep, perchance to -- Dream. That's very true. I never dream myself. But Guildenstern dreams all night long out loud.Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a tragic episode in three tableaux, founded on an old Danish legend
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a tragic episode in three tableaux
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Guide One Directory
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. A lithograph of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the flute ... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are fictional characters, a pair of ...
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - Wikipedia, the free ...
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ...
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - IMDb
Will Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or Guildenstern and Rosencrantz) manage to discover ... At times, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in a night-time setting, ...
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead: Information from Answers.com
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead A play set within the world of Shakespeare's Hamlet; first performed in 1966
Amazon.com: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ...
Amazon.com: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (9780802132758): Tom Stoppard: Books