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

Craig, Oliver Driver as Guildenstern, and Michael

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