Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Review: Shakespeare's Hamlet is possibly the single most famous play in the history of British literature. It deals with the vast issues: the grandest of thoughts, pains and emotions. Hamlet, the son of a great King wrestles with his subconscious knowledge of an evil misdoing that has led to his uncle taking the throne and a place in his mother's bed. Monumental stuff, eh?

No, there is no time for anything but the consideration of the biggest of questions as the play leads us down the spiral into madness of the mind of Hamlet.

So who, then, were the eminently forgettable Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? These two chaps were called over to the Palace as erstwhile friends of Hamlet in a bid to help him relax and remember better times. Literary criticism is divided on quite why Billy Shakespeare then gave them next to no lines in the play to achieve this! They are bit-players, C-list actors fill their roles at best, and their fate in the play, although barely given a passing thought, is certain death.

Step in the single cheekiest contemporary playwright: Mr Tom Stoppard. In 1967 Stoppard decided to elaborate the tale of these two nobodies, to consider what it was like for these characters to be full-time in the wings of the great tragedy with little or no idea of what was going on, or what they were supposed to do.

This is a great premise for what is one of the funniest plays you are ever likely to see.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead opens with our none-heroes spinning coins. They have done this many times but this time 92 coins have been spun and for 92 times the coins have come down heads. Guildenstern is disconcerted: has even the law of probability deserted the two of them?

This play is usually played out on an empty stage used to represent the wings of a theatre as the great Hamlet plays over to the left. From time to time a great swoop of colourful characters will walk on, saying the few lines that are said to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then swoop away again, leaving them even more confused than before. Our boys have little memory, no understanding of what they are doing, a concern that everything is pre-ordained (well their lives are scripted, after all) and a complete inability to take control of absolutely anything!

I give you just a small taster of the reigning confusion:

ROS: "I want to go home."
GUILD: "Don't let them confuse you."
ROS: "I'm out of my step here."
GUILD: "We'll soon be home and high - dry and home - I'll-"
ROS: "It's all over my depth -"
GUID "I'll hie you home and -"
ROS: "out of my head-"
GUILD: "dry you high and-"
ROS: " over my step over my head body! I tell you it's all stopping to a death, it's boding to a depth, stepping to a head, it's all heading to a dead stop."

Oh dear.

So what, my friends is their alternative fate in this alternative universe? Well now wouldn't that be telling!

Many have likened the concept of this play to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and with good reason: absurdity and fatalism are of tantamount importance in both. Yet I would still maintain that this much funnier play is still a true original. First produced in 1967 the play is a regular on many stages around the world today.

If you know Hamlet well then the skill of the Stoppard plot will not escape you. Although significantly shorter in running time than Shakespeare's play, each entrance and exit of the Hamlet characters is apparently timed to give Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the (condensed) "waiting times" that they would have had in Hamlet.

If you have never seen or read the great play itself then you will still find this play both clever and humorous, albeit to get the most out of a great night out you really should take a look at both printed plays before you go, so that you don't miss a trick!

Thanks for reading.