My opening salvo in last year's review was regarding the venue. The Shoppingtown Mall was even more deserted than it had been previously. In fact, as I walked through it before the theatre doors opened, I discovered entire corridors devoid of stores and people. It was a tad unsettling to say the least. At least the bird droppings of last year had been cleaned up.
Part of the interest in seeing R&G live for the third time was to see how it would be handled vis a vis its Shakespearean counterpart. The other times I had encountered R&G, in Oswego and Rochester, it was a part of repertory production. As such, the casts and sets were similar. With a one-year separation between CNY's shows, I wondered if this would be the case here. It was not. The set consisted of a largely bare stage with a stylishly torn curtain at the back and three large trunks/boxes at each side. While a few of the actors had appeared in last year's production (with the director of R&G having played Rosencrantz), none were reprising their previous roles. So this was an entirely separate work.
After pre-show audio consisting of a looped recording of ambient music and an actor speaking "The time is out of joint," the show began with our protagonists on stage, tossing coins. Their costumes were modern items coordinated to look period--unremarkably adequate. Unfortunately, the same could be said of the performances of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The actors expressed good diction and generally were in command of their lines, with only a few stumbles noted. As characters, though, they were unremarkably adequate; not bothersome, but not terribly interesting either. The witticism for which the original play is noted became a casualty of the tepid delivery. Yet, these roles were the highlight of the evening.
The remaining performances ranged from unpleasant to awful. The Player was simply boring. The direction called for the Hamlet roles to be performed as egregious slapstick, a decision that was questionable at best. Claudius, for instance, ended up with lipstick on the right side of his head after a kiss from a slobberingly sottish Gertrude, and the lipstick remained for the evening. The portrayal of Hamlet was dreadfully overdone. Polonius, in a cheap-looking silvery-white wig, delivered most of his lines with his eyes closed, as if he could not bear to look. I could not blame him on that count. For a play that is reputed to be comedic, there was hardly any legitimate humor evident. The actors merely chewed the scenery, and badly. It was telling that the most audible laughter came from the rear of the house, where the crew were stationed.
The play was performed with one intermission. The first intermission in Stoppard's original script was handled as a fade to black with some Hamlet lines piped in over the sound system. The lights came up and went into the playwright's Act II. The intermission in the CNY production came within Stoppard's Act II, at the blackout following the mock death scene and Guildenstern's speech about acting death. It was roughly 90 minutes after the show had begun, although it had felt much longer.
The intermission usually provides the audience a chance to stretch, to refresh, and to reset itself for what is to come. In this case and for this author, it was a chance to escape. The realization that at least another hour remained of the advertised running time was too much to bear. There was nothing about Act I that caused me to care in the least what happened to the characters. The time would be (and was) much better spent in heading for home.
So I have no idea how this production of R&G ended. Did our protagonists manage to avoid their title fate or did they lose their heads? Did it really matter? In my estimation, not particularly. To borrow a phrase from the Ambassador, who may or may not have appeared the end of the play, the sight was dismal.
