Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is the play that shot Tom Stoppard to overnight fame, annointing him as the young rock star of British playwriting. The audacious, absurdist drama premiered in Edinburgh in 1966 and transferred to the National Theatre – then based at London’s Old Vic – the following year. So, it seems particularly apt that the Old Vic should produce a 50th anniversary production on the same stage.

^{Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire. Photograph © Manuel Harlan}

Now audiences around the world have the chance to see it via NT Live (screening here in Australia thanks to Sharmill Films). It’s the first time that an Old Vic production has been part of NT Live, and a wonderful opportunity for Australians to see a production that has been so highly acclaimed in London.

You can’t help but marvel that the Czechoslovakian-born Stoppard was still only in his mid-20s when he wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. An existential riff on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which also references Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, it is full of dazzling verbal and intellectual gymnastics, as well as meta-theatrical games, with double entendres, puns, witticisms, word games and...