Lost in the Whitney gym in more ways than one

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH Moses and Robertson get acted upon.

Does this sound familiar? You're driving on the freeway, heading to that dinner party. It's just a few exits down. Funny, the situation from earlier is still bothering you. It was an angry lover, a back-stabbing friend, or a sick pet. You turn it over in your head, poking at it from all angles. Was it you? Was it her? Did Bobo drink dirty water? Just as you're about to reach a resolution, you're jerked spastically back to reality. Where are you? By God, you passed the exit! You're halfway to Albuquerque!

Don't feel bad. In Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, our two dazed heroes not only forget about their exit, but they also forget which way is north, what time of day it is when the sun rises, which of them is named what, and whether they are alive or dead. What they can be relatively sure of, however, is that they are probably going somewhere to do something for somebody.

Rosencrantz (Ian Robertson, DC '01) and Guildenstern (Itamar Moses, CC '99) are messengers: men who are paid to travel quickly and directly. Since they are obviously incapable of doing this, they simply sit around and shoot the breeze, waiting for things to happen. Every so often Rosencrantz hears some distant music, and some action occurs. The duo is an indirect object in a long verb phrase; they never act, but they are often acted upon. The clever arc of the play follows them as they seem to make progress (or, rather, progress is made) but at the same time are completely stuck in an unchanging surrounding.

In this production, director Claire Wladis, TD '99, creates this directionless, monotone environment for us to see. Vaguely Escheresque, the tiered blue stage has some stairs going up, some going down, and some going to the side. At first the set is disappointingly little to look at, but by the end it seems to nicely represent the nebulous quality of the whole journey. The journey could use some carpeting though, because there's a lot of running up and down stairs, and the din drowns out some of the lines.

The story is largely borrowed from Hamlet and even contains excerpts of dialogue and the characters to deliver them. Hamlet (George Cederquist, SM '01) runs around in the background, sneaking kisses with damsels, dragging around dead bodies, and delivering soliloquies. But his speeches, like the other Shakespearean action, is only background for the misadventures of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Stoppard's title is hardly illuminating. In Hamlet, you know who's dead at the end, and for that matter, who's alive at the beginning. Not so here. The utter timelessness that permeates the story overshadows the thin plot line. But at the same time there is a clear feeling of forward inertia, a movement towards some final, unavoidable end. The conflict between action and passivity appears many times in the play, and is most directly reflected by the traveling band of tragedians from Hamlet. Led by a charismatic Dan Fabulich, CC '01, they perform a series of 10-second mimed plays. Each one contains more action than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern see in their own two-hour-plus ordeal.

Waiting for the end to come is the central action of the play--if you had to rate it on the action scale against the explosions in Terminator II or the car chases in The Blues Brothers, it wouldn't win any trophies. This is why the play gets a little tedious at some points. But only a little. Robertson and Moses do an excellent job of delivering dialogue that gets its sweetness from correct timing. Because of the quick interchanges and tonal shifts, the parts would be much easier to perform if Robertson and Moses had overacted them. The play would also be a lot less interesting.

Far from some undergraduate shows in which the costumes are little more than T-shirts with characters' names written on them in black marker, the costuming in this production is creative and colorful. The gowns of the queen and princess are eye-catching, and the quick-changes pulled off by the tragedians are funny and well-executed.

The Whitney Humanity Center Gymnasium is a horrid place to hold a performance. It has terrible acoustics (doing no justice to the accompanying classical guitar by Ben Monreal, TD '99, and accordion by Natalie Howe, SY '01), no stadium seating, hardly any room to move, and is impossible to find. That this show was a pleasure to watch is a testament to the resilience and determination of the players and crew.

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