Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead – Assembly Roxy Upstairs
Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play that wears its cleverness cheerfully on its sleeve and occasionally waves it about like a philosophical flag. Absurd, witty and quietly unnerving, it takes two minor characters from Hamlet and places them centre stage in a universe where the rules of narrative appear only partially understood. For any company, let alone one mounting its very first production, it is a formidable undertaking. Yet Gutter Theatre of Edinburgh, present the play at The Roxy Upstairs, approach the challenge with a pleasing mixture of ambition and good humour.
The play famously opens with a coin tossing sequence in which probability appears to abandon the building entirely. From that moment onward Stoppard’s world of existential ...