‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ review: Court’s riveting staging captures anxiety on edge of ‘Hamlet’

Imagine a 95-minute mashup between the trippy, alternate realities of “Black Mirror,” and the vaudevillian patter/existential angst of “Waiting for Godot,” splashed with the haunting poetry of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” That will give you a sense of the myriad forces at play in Court Theatre’s riveting production of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”

Directed by Charles Newell, Stoppard’s inverted take on “Hamlet” is at once absurdly funny and — as it spins deeper and deeper into questions of free will versus destiny, what lies beyond the known universe and what becomes of us after we die — tantalizing and terrifying.

In “Hamlet,” Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters, interchangeable courtiers within the royal Denmark court. Stoppard puts the pair front and center, sending Prince Hamlet and his fratricidal, incestuous family to the periphery.

In “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” the titular duo is in the same predicament as scientists trying to suss out what lies beyond the known universe or theologians trying to explain the length of eternity: They are outside the only world they can conceive, the world contained within the pages of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

But you don’t need to know “Hamlet” to appreciate “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” (Spoiler alert if you haven’t read the title: Everybody dies.)

Stoppard’s text fills in the story with crystalline clarity. As in “The Lion King,” it involves a king who is murdered by a jealous brother. The brother Claudius then marries the king’s widow Gertrude and takes the crown for himself. The rightful king’s son is Prince Hamlet, and his quest to avenge his father drives the narrative.

Rosencrantz (Nate Burger) and Guildenstern (Erik Hellman) are swept up in this web like pawns in a tidal wave. They’re ordered by newly installed King Claudius (Amir Abdullah) first to spy on Prince Hamlet (Blake Hamilton Currie) and then to deliver Hamlet to England, where he’ll be murdered. The plot goes awry after Hamlet uncovers it and comes up with a counter-scheme that sacrifices Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead.

Crucially, “Hamlet” also contains a play-within-the-play performed by a troupe of traveling players who blur the line between reality and pretend as they act out a story of regicide and fratricide that mirrors events at the Danish court with the accuracy of a documentary.

In Newell’s memorable, cinematic staging, the play-in-the-play becomes a nightmare in crimson and flickering darkness, a bloody dumb show rendered via shadow play.

Newell plays up the meta-theatrics — when the fourth wall wobbles and the world of the play bleeds into actual reality of watching the play — to dazzling effect. The play-within-the-play is rehearsed against a massive, blood-red brick wall where Court Theatre’s logo is faintly silhouetted. John Culbert’s set design also features tiers of diaphanous curtains that slide back and forth, thin scrims that barely divide the world of the living from the world of the dead, the real and the pretend.

At times, lighting designer Keith Parham brings the house lights fully up or plunges the stage into darkness, sending the audience into brief, blinking confusion that mirrors that of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as they try to navigate scenes beyond the pages of “Hamlet.”

Yet even fathoms down in its brain-twisting, soul-searching depths, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” bubbles with wit.

Burger and Hellman have a chemistry that crackles, sparks and pops whether they’re bickering Abbott and Costello-style about the law of probability or clinging to each other like children awakened by a nightmare they can’t quite remember.

The supporting cast moves with the ease of mist as it brings to life both the Danish royals and the traveling troupe of actors playing their murderous doppelgangers. As The Player, Lorenzo Rush Jr. brings an enigmatic, omniscient agility to the stage, addressing matters of mortality with chilling, pragmatic fatality. Blake Hamilton Currie’s Hamlet is extraordinary: His first line is just a sound — a cross between a wail and a roar that captures all of Hamlet’s dire confusion and fear.

Amir Abdullah delivers a menacing, alluring King Claudius, while Rob Lindley turns the verbose Polonius into a gently persnickety soul who — like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — has no real agency over his life.

Newell’s garotte-tight pacing keeps “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” moving with furious intent from start to finish. And in reclaiming the lives of two largely disregarded characters, the production opens up a marvelous alternate universe to “Hamlet” and all that it explores.