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Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Presented by the Auckland Theatre Company at the
Maidment Theatre, Auckland, New Zealand, May 2001
written by Tom Stoppard; directed by Colin McColl


Craig Parker as Rosencrantz and Michael Hurst as The Player
(with the tragedians)

Craig, Oliver Driver as Guildenstern, and Michael




Rosencrantz
Guildenstern
The Player
Hamlet
Gertrude
Claudius
Ophelia
Alfred

 

 Craig Parker
Oliver Driver
Michael Hurst
Joel Tobeck
Geraldine Brophy
Peter Elliott
Sophia Hawthorne
William Plumb

Polonius/Tragedian
Tragedian
Tragedian
Tragedian

Director
Designer
Lighting Designer
Costume Designer

  

Jon Brazier
Shimpal Lelisi
Stephen Papps
Stephen Butterworth

Colin McColl
John Parker
Bryan Caldwell
Elizabeth Whiting



Program notes:

From the producer: "Why do we exist?" is a question that dramatists have attempted to address throughout the ages. Recently exposed pot-head William Shakespeare had a stab at it in HAMLET, with the Danish Prince pondering the point of his own [and others'] life before almost everyone dies in the gruesome finale. Having met their demise sometime before, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern do not feature in Act V's mostly royal body count. Hamlet's two college buddies are dispatched offstage, their passing noted in passing with the line that Tom Stoppard had chosen to title his take on the immortal question. Here, without reference or context, the duo is caught up in a drama not of their creation and beyond their control: action seems arbitrary, false moves fatal and the ambiguous utterances of 'Actors' the only apparent insight on offer. Sounds like a superb metaphor for life to me.

-Simon Prast



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Reviews and Articles on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(click links below for complete articles)

National Business Review:  "Michael Hurst as the ebullient Player is brilliant."

New Zealand Herald :  "Michael Hurst shines as the Player. Resisting the obvious interpretation of a plummy actor/manager of the old 'blood, love and rhetoric school,' he is a gritty, spunky street philosopher and 'comic pornographer.'"

New Zealand Herald (article about the design of the costumes):  "Hurst's costume is the one which has changed the most in the process of evolution from sketch to stage. On the day of the read-through, when Whiting presented her ideas to the cast, Hurst said 'Oh, no. That's not how I see myself.'"