Written in 1967 and performed first at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before appearing in London in the West End, this was Stoppard’s first play on Broadway.  It received rave reviews and  garnered 8 Tony nominations and 4  Tony awards as well as being named Best Play by the New York Drama Critics Circle. It has been widely adapted for the radio, and Stoppard, in his only film directing role, brought it to the cinema in 1990.

The play riffs on the final act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Rosencranz and Guildenstern, two minor court members are dispatched to take Hamlet to England to be murdered on the orders of Hamlet’s evil uncle.  Instead, Hamlet alters the letter they bear and instead of Hamlet’s murder, our two courtiers are done in.

The play reads like a cross between “Waiting for Godot” and a Monty Python TV show.  Two characters share the stage engaging in idle and often very funny banter about life, death, and free will.  Their dialogue is interrupted by the appearance of the Tragedians, a motley crew of actors who provide the foil for their verbal explorations.  The play is both unsettling and very funny.  Clive Barnes, the NYT theater critic described the 1967 production as  “very funny, very brilliant, very chilling.” 

At its core, this is a play, like Stoppard’s Arcadia which addresses the issue of free will.  Were Rosencranz and Guildenstern destined to die in England?  Did they have any choice to take another path?  Why did Hamlet spend all that time ‘to be or not to being’ when his fate had been sealed well in advance?  This all takes me back to Robert Sopolsky’s book, “Determined” in which he argues like Thomassina in Arcadia that if we only knew the location, mass, and velocity of every particle at this moment, we could accurately predict the future.  It’s a compelling question presented by Stoppard in a powerful way.

I listened to the first act on an audiobook, but found it to go by way too fast for me to get it.  Then I read the play in its entirety, and now I look forward to watching the 1990 movie.  I regret that I missed the 50th anniversary revival on Broadway in 2017 starring Daniel Radcliffe, fresh from his Harry Potter movies.

Stoppard continues to impress me as a modern genius.  I look forward to reading his entire ouevre and Hermione Lee’s biography of this brilliant man.