Hart House presents an uninspired opener to their new season
by Stuart Munro
At one point towards the end of Tom Stoppard’s 1966 play, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, one of the titular characters looks at the other and asks, “What’s the point?” As members of the audience at the opening night of Hart House’s new production of this classic piece, fellow CharPo writer Dave Ross and I were forced to answer this question with “Yes, exactly.” It’s not that this production is a disaster (though that might’ve been more entertaining). Rather it too often falls flat, allowing neither the absurdity to shine nor the questions surrounding what it means to be a character in a play vs. a person with free will to be clearly examined.
While Stoppard’s text is still witty and thought provoking, there’s rarely ever any time to properly sit and absorb it.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead follows the two characters from Hamlet as they attempt to piece together who they are and why they’ve been called to Elsinore, the setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Along the way they question the meaning of their own existence and blur the lines between actor and audience. Obviously there are more questions to be explored in the three-act piece, but Director Matthew Gorman was either incapable or unwilling to ask them. While Stoppard’s text is still witty and thought provoking, there’s rarely ever any time to properly sit and absorb it. Instead, the audience was rushed from scene to scene, thought to thought, without being given the chance to consider, let alone think about what’s just happened. Moreover, the Shakespearean sections of the play were treated as though they were a genuine part of the absurdist comedy built around it. Benjamin Muir as Hamlet behaved like some sort of Johnny Depp/Edward Scissorhands inspired clown, often frantically flailing with no real purpose, and Brenna Stewart’s Ophelia has a rather confusing hissy-fit at one point, ending with her giving both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the finger and whispering “Fuck you all” before storming off stage. To be fair, both actors performed these caricatures well, but the effect robbed the play within the play of its weight. Instead of acting as a foil to the absurdity of Stoppard’s text, it simply added to it, making everything less comprehensible.
The two title characters, thankfully, help to save this ship from completely going under. Jim Armstrong as Rosencrantz and Andrew Knowlton as Guildenstern were completely at ease with the complexity (and often nonsensical nature) of the text. Knowlton, with his confidence and dashing good looks, easily leads the pair, both as the play demands and in terms of natural ability. As Rosencrantz, Armstrong is appropriately naïve and nervous, and his comic timing is almost always spot on. The two have wonderful chemistry on stage and make most of the evening worth watching. As the lead player, David Tripp lacked a certain gravitas to make his few key moments really come alive. The players had an appropriate sort of rag-tag feel to them, but the unusual decision to cast a woman as the only named player (Alfred) ruins a gender-based joke early on and, like so many other elements of this production, adds to the confusion.
The set and lighting designs by Stephan Droege were filled with good ideas poorly executed. On stage was a raised platform with ramps coming off it in several directions, including one jutting into the audience. It manages to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. The back of the stage was black-matted oval onto which a series of mostly purposeless and poorly focused projections were placed. Lighting, in general, was an issue, with many actors walking right out of their light or, too often, waiting for it to catch up. Ming Wong’s costumes were a bit of a mish-mash and could’ve had the play set anywhere from France to Russia to Spain. The only real exceptions were the lead characters who were casually but cohesively dressed.
In his Director’s Notes, Mr. Gorman states that the company has made “no pretentions of having all the answers. We have our ideas as to where these two characters came from and where they’re going and we offer those to you as our half of tonight’s conversation. Make no mistake, you [the audience] have work to do.” Our work can only begin when the other side knows what it’s trying to say. Otherwise all that’s left is a lot of talk with not a lot of meaning.
Wow, my thoughts exactly on Hamlet! The first thing that came to mind was: why does our troubled Hamlet look like Edward Scissorhands? His antic disposition lacked the artistry I expected. I too felt that Ophelia's cursing fit was a moment that stuck out from the rest of the play's body like a sore thumb. The actors playing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were fantastic and made this production worth checking out.
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