Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
★★★☆☆ Solid
Church Hill Theatre: Thur 16 – Sat 18 April 2026
Review by Thom Dibdin
The Makars give a solid account of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Church Hill Theatre, in a production which speaks to the mundanities of Tom Stoppard’s script while allowing its humour to speak for itself.
Directors Dario Dalla Costa and Craig Gell pare it back to the bare bones of the drama between the two titular bit part characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. They then play it relatively straight, so that the existential questing goes spiralling off without casting too much of a pall over the stage.
Ewan Whyte and Russell Loten. Pic: Craig Gell.
Russell Loten and Ewan Whyte are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – or maybe they are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. Even the characters seem unsure, in perhaps the most unsettling and successful element of the production.
The pair wander around an empty, liminal backstage area. A production of Hamlet is happening somewhere beyond the realms of the drapes and occasionally impinges in their actions, when they are called to perform in it or the characters wander back stage themselves.
They toss coins, ask questions of each other and wonder where on earth they have come from. Can they remember anything beyond being woken that morning by a messenger? Hamlet is an old school chum – this they know because they have been told it is so.
They just are
There is no clear tension between Loten and Whyte, however. They just are. Loten is the clearest speaking and most convincing of the two and his Rosencrantz is certainly more forthright than Whyte’s rather fuzzy-round-the-edges Guildenstern.
There is nothing fuzzy, apart from his succession of fake fur coats, about Declyn Tracey as the Player: leader of the group of Tragedians the pair meet upon the road on their way to Elsinore. Arch and committed, Tracey’s Player is the brightest thing about the whole production.
The Tragedians. Declyn Tracey (Player) with Bunny Steven, Alyson Topping, Nicola Hamilton, Ben Carey, Liam Mortell, Stewart Black and Dave Flanagan. Pic Craig Gell.
The Tragedians, of course, are to perform for Hamlet a tragedy doctored to reflect his uncle Claudius’s murder of Hamlet’s father and usurping of both the late king’s bed and his throne.
This is a contented company, despite the Player’s attempts to pimp them to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Not particularly hungry, except to perform, they are just there, on the road. Even Stewart Black’s put-upon Alfred, seems relatively content. But when they do perform, whether it is as the players or as major characters from Hamlet, they zing.
Bunny Steven’s Ophelia is particularly brilliant. Frail, unbuttoned and crushed by Hamlet, yet yearning for more, Steven brings a few rare moment of eye-widening tension to the whole piece.
clarity
Most importantly, the various players bring clarity to both their mummers play and to their courtly characters. Nicola Hamilton as Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, Dave Flanagan as Claudius and Liam Mortell as Polonius, all give proper meaning to Shakespeare’s lines. Alyson Topping and Ben Carey are consistently supportive in both camps.
What this does lack, is a sense of any power relationships between the characters – except when those characters are giving a performance themselves and then they hold, which leads to a production that is marked by its malleability and blurred edges.
The Court. Liam Mortell, Bunny Steven, Nicola Hamilton, Dave Flanagan, Russell Loten and Ewan Whyte. Pic Martin Burnell.
However, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves on a boat bound for England, Dalla Costa and Craig Gell really begin to assert their ideas on the whole production. What has meandered, now seems to have set a course, even it still doesn’t quite know where it is going.
There has already been clever use of the Tragedians out in the audience, with a spot of community singing. Now, magically arrived on the boat from the depths of the pit, they are urged to blend into the background by the Player and proceed to use their bodies to furnish a stage that was previously bare, but for a pair of barrels and a deck chair.
a spark of invention
It is a great idea, and the ensuing chat between the Player, Guildenstern, Rosencrantz and Hamlet has a spark of invention and clarity. Although, sadly, while Adrien Moore is a convincingly distracted Hamlet, he failed to get the memo about clarity of language.
Technically, it is all well worked out. The wardrobe department (Jo Barrow, Freya Lawson and Kennedy Martin) have helped delineate the levels of performance in the company. Cleo Catherine’s lighting serves the lines well, without ever being intrusive, and Martin Burnell’s sound is similarly effective.
As this fades into its twilight and the report of its protagonist’s demise, there is little to remember of their brief journey across its vast, open and empty stage. But that, really, is the point: they are but walking shadows, who strut their time upon the stage and then are heard no more.
Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes (including one interval).
Church Hill Theatre, 33 Morningside Road, EH10 4DR.
Thursday 16 – Saturday 18 April 2026.
Evenings: 7.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here. Tickets also available on the door.
The Makars will be staging a Double Bill of Fools Errand by Georgia Smith and Noël Coward’s Still Life at The Royal Scots Club during this year’s Fringe.
Double Bill (Makars)
The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Place EH3 6QE (Venue 241).
Monday 24 – Saturday 29 August 2026
Evenings: 7.30 pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
On board: Declyn Tracey (in hat), Ewan Whyte (cross legged), Russell Loten (lying down) and Adrian Moore (in deck chair), with Dave Flanagan (coat stand), Liam Mortell (door), Bunny Steven, Ben Carey, Nicola Hamilton and Alyson Topping (armchair) and Stewart Black (tiger-skin rug). Pic: Martin Burnell.
ENDS
