“Audiences know what to expect, and that is all they are prepared to believe in” is a central proposition of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” but I certainly didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at the theater this past weekend. All brushed up on my Shakespeare quotes, I took my seat unsure whether to be — or not to be — braced for a philosophical upheaval.
From Thursday to Saturday, Brown student theater group Something on the Green took over the Granoff Center for an eerie three-day production of Tom Stoppard’s classic. An absurdist spin-off of “Hamlet,” the tragicomedy somehow manages to make Shakespeare’s tragedy even more discombobulating and existential.
The perplexing play raised a barrage of questions about fate, purpose and what happens when you cast the spotlight onto two minor characters. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two rather irrelevant figures in “Hamlet,” spend almost the entirety of Stoppard’s play questioning what they should be doing. Prince Hamlet has gone mad, and it is up to them to find out why — but along the way, it seems that everyone has been driven insane by the limitations of their destinies.
While most of the play consists of witty repartee and slapstick jokes, director Calvin Ware ’26 walked a masterful line between the ridiculous and the tragic, as the audience found themselves both rolling their eyes at and clutching their chests for these lost characters. The play is demandingly metatheatrical. It plays daringly with dramatic irony, constantly pushing the audience to consider what it means to be helpless in one’s own story.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are warned repeatedly that they are “marked for death,” yet they cannot bring themselves to believe it. At one point, Guildenstern sums up their position in the metaphor of their being passengers on a boat: “We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind.”
Brown and RISD students built the stage, designed costumes and managed lighting and sound on their own, and the results were remarkable.
“It really feels like I know where every limb of this operation is coming from because it’s all kids I’ve hung out with and worked with before,” said co-lead Harry Tarses ’27, who played Guildenstern. That, he added, contributed to a “sense of togetherness that I think is rare and a really community-building experience.”
Ware hailed his production team and cast. “Everyone is really putting their heart and soul into everything, and I’m confident in all of us,” he said.
The fruits of collaboration manifested in the performance’s attention to detail and precise execution. From rapid enigmatic monologues and linguistic spars to well-coordinated action scenes, Ware did justice to a convoluted and challenging play. It felt like a mixture of “Waiting for Godot” and “Dumb and Dumber,” as the stumbling duo of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern asked theater’s — and life’s — most unanswerable questions amid word games and jests.
Audience member Conrad Gardey ’28 praised the play, calling it a “phenomenal performance from both Harry Tarses and Zane Elinson.”
Ella Rummery ’28 said that the play was both “childish and philosophical in a way that everyone could understand.”
I left the show moved and confused, thinking about a line from Isabelle Levine ’28’s character, The Player. “If life was a bet,” they propose, “you wouldn’t take it.” Yet, as reflected in the play’s opening coin toss that always comes up heads, Stoppard demonstrates that humanity is an absurd, impossible bet against death, played out through the inevitable beheading of our dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Rose Farman-Farma is a Freshman Comparative Literature concentrator from England who loves writing and music.
