Arts and Entertainment

Brainy play gets a snappy production in UAA's 'Rosencrantz'

Few works of modern theater have received as much critical analysis and as many productions as Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." UAA's current production shows why: A lot of people want to see it more than once.

It can be parsed and investigated on any number of levels by those whose passions include language, philosophy, mathematics, theater in general or Shakespeare in particular. But despite being very, very wordy, it flies by with a sense of spectacle worthy of a trapeze act. It's like a marriage between Jean-Paul Sartre and the Marx Brothers.

Stoppard's plots aren't so much beginning-and-end stories as essays on rarified physics, string and chaos theory stuff, somehow applied to the human condition. In the case of this play, we follow the antics and angst of the title characters, two bit parts in the vast dramatic tapestry that is "Hamlet." They careen across 2 1/2 hours grappling with questions of existence, mortality, the meaning of life, the nature of reality, free will, chance, destiny and the function of theater. Whiffs of Shakespeare's famous tale of the Prince of Denmark's revenge flitter around the edges of the action while the main energy stays focused on the title characters (who may or may not be dead), two tiny eddies in the massive maelstrom of the "Hamlet" saga.

In what appears to be his UAA swan song, David Edgecombe has directed an artfully animated and lively show. The genius of the play lies in its rush of syllables, sentences and ideas. But we stay glued to the movement and gestures of the players in this staging. There's a "Dumb and Dumber" goofiness to scatterbrained Rosencrantz and a meditative, Charlie Brownish somber quality to Guildenstern. It's often called a comedy, because the lines are funny, but its subject and conclusion are Sophoclean tragedy.

These are hard roles to pull off, arguably harder than Hamlet himself. But Morgan Mitchell (Rosencrantz) and Jacob Mayforth (Guildenstern) do an excellent job. They've had to memorize a thick book of lines, some of which can appear absurd, and deliver them rapidly yet clearly with scarcely a pause while generating movement, even running, in a play where nothing really happens. The pair rose to the challenge. The third major role, the leader of a troupe of actors, was also adroitly performed by the rich-voiced Justin Oller.

The performers who had small parts seemed to do the best when they had the least to do, like Zachary Smith as the stooge Alfred, or Emily Pratt, who had no lines but only sobs as she darted across the stage in the role of Ophelia. But the parts of the major characters from "Hamlet," reciting Shakespeare's lines, seemed stiff in comparison to the three top-billed actors.

Daniel Glen Carlgren's large two-story Tudor set from UAA's previous show, "Twelfth Night," has been reworked for this production. Original music by Wolfgang Olsson is featured along with actual renaissance tunes like John Dowland's "Lacrymae."

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD will continue at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday through March 8 at UAA's Mainstage theater.

Mike Dunham

Mike Dunham was a longtime ADN reporter, mainly writing about culture, arts and Alaska history. He worked in radio for 20 years before switching to print. He retired from the ADN in 2017.

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