REVIEWS

“It’s quite the coup that Halifax’s Neptune Theatre — which mounted this production before it transferred to Toronto — managed to secure both actors. They’re clearly a draw for the box office. (The play’s current run in Toronto was extended twice before it even opened). Plus, with a friendship and professional partnership stretching back more than two decades, they feel ideal for the roles. 

Indeed, that’s evident right from the play’s opening scene. Endlessly watchable, they possess a chemistry that feels wholly natural, a perfectly calibrated double act, balancing the levity of the humour with the dark existentialism coiled underneath.

To make it appear so effortless is no easy feat in this play. The text, fast and quippish, is like a high-speed racquet game, with barbed lines of dialogue and pithy jokes launched back and forth. But both actors never drop the ball”

• Joshua Chong, Senior Arts Critic, Toronto Star

"Playful and poignant! Once you acclimatize to Stoppard's absurdist world of games and meditations, prepare for a brilliant production. Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan light up the stage with their charm, humor, but there's also a heartfelt melancholy that endears us. ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is ageless, and finds fresh perspective at the CAA."

- Mark Wigmore, New Classical FM

"Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan. Perfect casting!"

- Bonnie Laufer, Sirius XM

"Boyd and Monaghan are brilliant as the title characters. An engaging show for both the heart and the head."

- Richard Crouse, Newstalk 1010

"Shakespeare's Hamlet is flipped on its skull in this brilliant and modern masterpiece."

- Sam Houston, The Morning Zoom with Sam & Jane

“Neptune’s production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is truly a shining gem across the theatre’s long history. When an event can get non-theatre-goers rushing for tickets, it’s an enlivening thing to see in this day and age. It means all the more when the piece truly does live up to expectations, and Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd truly deliver cerebral magic.”

- Art Critique

“Take a beloved contemporary play by Tom Stoppard, cast starring actors from theLord of the Rings films, and finish it off with some of Canadian theatre’s bestShakespearean actors, and you’ve got an assured box office hit. But star powerisn’t the only reason Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead shines — instead,it’s the clever use of contrast between the large and small that lights up the stage, and thesecontrasts extend through every aspect of the production.

Director Jeremy Webb’s vision is clear throughout the play, and utilizes the complex demands of the script to craft a dancebetween elements of decadence and distress. The result is the ride of a lifetime, so strap inand hold onto your hats.”

- Intermission Magazine

“Director Jeremy Webb’s production of Tom Stoppard’s 1966 classic is pitch-perfect. This wordy, dark comedy of the absurd about mortality, fate and theatre itself needs a careful balance of realism and the overly theatrical.

Webb anchors Monaghan and Boyd in realism even as their characters don’t know where they are, who they are, or where they are going – a modern and timeless human dilemma. They only know they are destined to die.”

-NS Reviews

“This production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a huge triumphfor Neptune Theatre, for Jeremy Webb, and for Halifax as a whole. It’s incrediblyexciting to have a show so masterfully performed and imaginatively conceived starthere, in Halifax, before travelling on to Toronto, rather than the other way around.

The eyes of the theatre community across the country (and beyond!) are on Halifax,which is a role that Halifax is wildly unaccustomed to, but I hope this will be thebeginning of a new era where Nova Scotia continues to come into her own as a leader,and an innovator in the Canadian Theatre. I’m certain this will remain a definitive production of this play for me.”

-The Way I See It

IMAGES

Photos by Stoo Metz. Featuring the cast of R&G Are Dead (listed below)