Posted: Sun., Jul. 11, 1999, 11:00pm PT

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

((COMEDY REVIVAL; WILLIAMSTOWN THEATER FESTIVAL NIKOS STAGE; 96 SEATS; $ 19 TOP))

By Markland Taylor

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. A Williamstown Theater Festival presentation of a play in three acts by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Darko Tresnjak.

Rosencrantz ..... Christopher Evan Welch Guildenstern ..... Jefferson Mays The Player ..... Richard Kind Alfred ..... Jack Ferver Hamlet ..... David Hornsby Ophelia ..... Sheryl Lynn Bowers Claudius ..... Thomas Schall Gertrude ..... Sandra Shipley Polonius ..... Gregor Paslawsky

Players: Sterling Brown, Damien Carney, Rob Connolly, Richard Glover, Glen Waldon Covert.

Court: Andrew Leeds, Donald Sheehan, Kathleen Carthy, Keely Elizabeth Flynn.

With its third offering this season, a revival of Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," the Williamstown Theater Festival finally presents a production with the high quality with which the festival is often credited, but too often fails to deliver. One of the most assured, utterly professional WTF productions in years, it richly deserves to be seen beyond two weeks in northwestern Massachusetts.

The production also introduces to its paying audiences a splendid director, Darko Tresnjak, whose Williamstown work until now has been limited to the outdoor Free Theater productions. With mostly opera experience to draw on, Tresnjak has created a production of this coruscating crossword puzzle of a play that overflows with verve, wit, clarity and, yes, emotion --- it's a great deal more than just wordplay.

The production seems to have benefitted from the revival of "The Importance of Being Earnest" that recently closed the 1998-99 season of New Haven's Long Wharf Theater. That show's hilarious comic duo of opposites, Christopher Evan Welch (Algernon) and Jefferson Mays (John/Ernest), are now Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Their two months of work together on Wilde no doubt helped them deliver a technically perfectly duet here. They bounce off one another with rare expertise.

Once again it is Mays, at least a head shorter than Welch, who is the driving force, playing a bantam-rooster Guildenstern, with Welch the perfect foil as a crybaby Ros so dim he isn't always sure which of the two he actually is.

The actors' verbal incisiveness is endlessly impressive, with every playful word and non sequitur coming across with impact and meaning in the WTF's tiny 96 -seat Nikos Stage.

Rather than being about death, as its title suggests, Stoppard's play seems in this production more about how bewildering life can be. Ros and Guil, who are totally at sea as to what is expected of them in the court of Elsinore, come to represent humanity as a whole as it struggles to cope with life. Stoppard, Tresnjak, Welch and Mays make us care for this sad, sweet, sorry pair.

The play's conceit is, of course, a look at "Hamlet" from the point of view of two of its least important characters. It moves in and out of Stoppard, in and out of Shakespeare, the two merging and blending masterfully, beginning with Ros and Guil resting on the road to Elsinore and ending with the pair on board ship with Hamlet, bound for England, where they will be murdered.

Tresnjak has created a true ensemble from his cast, every member contributing to the production's overall impact. As the Player, Richard Kind hurls himself into highly polished overacting with exactly the right love of theater; his raggle-taggle group of strolling players aid him ably, notably Jack Ferver as Alfred, the young man who plays all the group's female roles.

Tresnjak has given his production strong sexual energy. Claudius (Thomas Schall) and Gertrude (Sandra Shipley) can't keep their hands or lips off one another. Several of the players, including Alfred, are homosexual. David Hornsby's Hamlet, firmly based on Olivier's romantic blond movie Hamlet, has a girlish giggle, and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's relationship may have progressed to the point where it dares to speak its name.

Visually, the production is black on black, Takeshi Kata's set making fascinating use of shadowplay to complement the script's wordplay. The strolling players are first seen as life-size shadows parading behind a rear scrim. Costume designer Linda Cho has Ros and Guil and almost all of the court in black "Shakespearean" costumes, albeit sometimes liberally decorated in gold. Only the players wear colors. The main musical motif is variations on "Greensleeves."

All told, this reviewer found Williamstown's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" more rewarding than the 1967 Broadway production thanks to Tresnjak, Mays, Welch and the WTF's cozy Nikos Stage. The play itself is as fresh as the day it was born. Coincidentally, July 3 was Stoppard's 62nd birthday. Here was a perfect birthday present.

Set, Takeshi Kata; costumes, Linda Cho; lighting, Christopher J. Landy; sound, Kurt B. Kellenberger; stage manager, Grayson Meritt. Williamstown Theater Festival producer, Michael Ritchie. Opened July 1, 1999. Reviewed July 3. Running time: 2 HOURS, 15 MIN.