When I first read “Hamlet” in a high school literature class, Shakespeare’s language was still difficult and unfamiliar, but I immediately and always felt affection for its conflicted [anti]hero.  A family friend told me about “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, which I also immediately read, intrigued by the concept, and understood nothing.  I have seen some magnificent productions of “Hamlet” over the years, and have been fortunate to ponder and debate its themes with folks much smarter and more astute than myself.  Until now, I have never seen the parallel universe version.

When “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” rolled into Toronto, with two of the Hobbits, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, as the leads, I was determined to make the trek.  Now, the Hobbit connection is of no use to me—I slept through all those movies, sitting upright and with my eyes wide open, and actually listened to the book on tape, all 197 hours of it, and retained none of it.  But, I appreciate both the tremendous stage training and presence of the British actors, and the immense talent of Tom Stoppard, one of the greatest—if not THE greatest—living playwrights.  I have come a long way since I first read his words.

Toronto, on occasion, has served as an extension of my theater playground.  It tends to have a slightly different lineup for big Broadway shows through the Mirvish theaters, and some straight plays in addition to the major musicals.  I do not know the city, just how to find my way to the couple of theaters and, obviously, to the Hockey Hall of Fame.  My favorite restaurant, Le Marché, fell victim to the pandemic economy, so the play was truly the only focus of this trip.

I was not disappointed (spoiler alert: far from it!).  But I was surprised.  My memory of this play was so hazy as to be almost nonexistent.  I just knew what is common knowledge: absurdist tragicomedy, similar to “Waiting for Godot”, minor characters from a major play.  All of this is technically true, and none of it is sufficient.  I did not find it absurdist but actually quite heartfelt and authentic—unless life is absurd, and that is a premise that I refuse to countenance.  And as for being minor characters—well, maybe they only passed through “Hamlet”, but they are the heroes of their own story.  I was reminded of how Fredrik Bakman weaves the same cast of characters through several novels, with some front and center in one book but only episodically appearing in another.  Stoppard did it earlier.

These guys were so gentle and genuine.  Rosencrantz in particular was sweet, befuddled, with a hint of Eric Idle-esque wide-eyed mischief.  Guildenstern was a bit more anxious and focused, and also wistful.  There is so much to absorb and contemplate.  They live in a parallel universe and we know how their story will end, but they do not know it.  They are not entirely sure of anything, including the limits of their own power and will. They are floundering, but they are living—as are we all. And that is really the story.  We might think that they do not have agency, but that is only because the title of the play gives it away.   And even despite that, I was waiting for it to unfold differently.  I did not get the sense that they are marching toward an inevitable conclusion.  They are just making some decisions that will affect their lives in dire ways—as do we all.  The Casablanca quote came to my mind, the one about how “the problems of three [let alone two—OLW] little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world”.

And there is no predestination, just a series of circumstances and how people make the best, and occasionally the worst, of them, because they are not omniscient.  It is a story of two guys who are not necessarily worse than anyone else.  And in this production, it also helped that Hamlet himself was the worst character in the ensemble:  bearded middle aged man, prone to bulging eyes, with a startlingly booming voice and an utterly charmless manner.  He was manipulative, callous, and revenge-driven.  It was impossible to care, let alone root, for him. Perhaps that was intentional, but I do not know the play—I only know what I felt.  This all goes back to who controls the narrative—“who tells your story”.

And so this experience just confirmed, yet again, my firm belief that plays need to be seen, and the power of live theatre to make one think and feel is unsurpassed.  I wrote before about that one moment for which I wait in each show, and here there was the instance that I realized what is coming, and spouse whispered to me, “This is how they die”.  So invested was I that I forgot the title of show!  And then when Guildenstern said,  “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it”.  It broke my heart.  And that is really it; “the rest is silence”.