What in God's name is going on?!!

I cannot remember the last time I went to the cinema to see an NT Live broadcast until last night, but it was good to support them again. This time, I caught The Old Vic's revival of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, which was beamed live to cinemas all around the world, let alone the country. Premiering at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966, it made its London debut, at The Old Vic, a year later, and as been revived many times ever since. It has also adapted twice for BBC Radio 3, and also into a film starring Gary Oldman.

The play follows Rosencrantz (Daniel Radcliffe) and Gildenstern (Joshua McGuire) (I tell you what, how about from now on, I call them R and G?), two minor, and rather passive characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Running parallel to the classic piece, the two young men try and bumble through their mission and to figure out, as the title to this review suggests, what on earth is going on.
After having caught Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet, I could not remember either of these characters, despite obviously knowing the main parts of the story; however, the concept seemed intriguing enough, and it also gave another opportunity to catch Radcliffe on stage, as I have also seen him in The Cripple of Innishmaan a few years ago at the Noel Coward; and so my dad and I pre-booked tickets and headed along to our local cinema.

A lot of the play is just R and G on stage by themselves, in fact they never leave the stage, and I think Radcliffe and McGuire had a fantastic chemistry and boyish friendship between them, something obviously crucial to this piece. These characters aren't exactly the brightest of sparks, and that does bring some hilarious misunderstandings and musings, from death to the theory of probability (not as boring as that appears to be, I promise). Despite that, it's not all witty gags and quick laughs - Stoppard is smarter than that. For anyone who has seen Hamlet, they will know that these young guys (however minor) are not spared, and it is can be sentimental in how it discusses death too.

I should have mentioned before that there are small crossovers into Hamlet itself, so you do get to see a lot of characters from the play itself (including a Hamlet with some pretty mean shades). Whenever these characters appear, they switch to dialogue that sounds a lot more Shakesperean rather than more modern-speak (shared with R and G themselves, along with David Haig's Player, who I must give a special mention to, a cross between Pippin's Leading Player and Miss Saigon's Engineer, and perhaps a little pirate too) - perhaps these crossovers are the original scenes, I'm not sure. But it did provide a contrast, almost like switching between an informal to much more formal tone.

I'm not sure what else to say about it to be honest, other than it is an interesting concept, Stoppard's writing is just brilliant and it was a nice tasty introduction into metatheatre.
It finishes in London on 29th April, so if you're in the London area, and you like the sound of this, give it a try and get in quick. If you're in two minds, simple - just toss a coin ;)