What: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Where: Langham Court Theatre
When: Opens 8 p.m. tonight, continues to June 28
Tickets: $19, $21, 250-384-2142
The co-directors of Langham Court Theatre’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead have just one rule.
It’s this: Once Keith Digby and Cynthia Pronick reach the Malahat Summit sign on the drive home to Cobble Hill, the couple agree to stop talking shop.
Recently, the edict was put to the test. Digby and Pronick were discussing the Tom Stoppard play. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is devilishly complex, stuffed with meta-theatre, existentialism, absurdity and the like. As their car neared the Malahat Summit sign, road construction slowed their approach.
“We stopped three metres from the sign. And Keith was trying to inch forward, to get us past that sign. But there was a car in the way,” Pronick said, laughing.
Partners in life as well as theatre, Digby and Pronick have co-directed five other plays for Langham Court Theatre. Their collaboration began in 1996, when they directed Stoppard’s Arcadia for the community theatre company.
Digby, who’s the former artistic director of Victoria’s Bastion Theatre, is a screenwriter with an extensive background in professional theatre. Pronick has acted for years in community theatre.
And she’s the cousin of actor Michael J. Fox (“We don’t see him that often; every couple of years,” she said). With Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the Langham Court gang have their work cut out for them. The 1966 play established Stoppard as a brilliant young playwright who took two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and created an ambitious tragi-comedy tipping its hat as much to Beckett as the Bard.
In the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a pair of bunglers sent to spy on Hamlet. They not only bungle this, they wander through the action in a state of perpetual confusion, sometimes even forgetting who they are — or even whether they’re alive or dead.
Digby said the main challenge for the leads — Alex Judd as Rosencrantz and Rick Rodrigues as Guildenstern — is the sheer length and variety of their roles.
“[Stoppard’s] taken two minor roles and made them among the longest roles in the modern canon ... And you have to be able to go at a hell of a pace at one time and then lyrical. And then rattle a whole set of dialogue, and then think, take it down and deliver a beautiful speech,” he said.
Another challenge was more technical. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead calls for numerous ambitious scene changes — something beyond the reach of a community theatre such as Langham Court. To get around this, Digby, Pronick and designer Bill Adams concocted an abstract set that, with clever lighting, can suggest a variety of locales. The all-beige set is flanked by gauzy screens giving the stage a cave-like look.
“It’s almost like a wormhole in the universe. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in the middle of it,” Digby said.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead has serious themes. However, Digby and Pronick say for the play to work, the humour must also be emphasized which is something Stoppard himself has declared.
That said, don’t go expecting an evening of light entertainment.
“It’s not the sort of play where you go out for a big meal, have three pints, and come and watch it,” Digby said. He added: “It’s marvellous. It’s a monster, a glorious monster.”