Ersatz erudition

Harry Potter, who uses the stage name Daniel Radcliffe, is a producer’s delight. By now it’s becoming clear that the four-eyed wizard lacks distinction as an actor. He’s not a comedian, certainly not a leading man or a heart-throb, and he hasn’t the ugliness or eccentricity to be a villain. But this Polyfilla quality means he can be dropped into anything without harming the fabric. His presence in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead — a difficult and at times flimsy exhibition of varsity wit — is an insurance policy that will guarantee brisk business at the box office. He and his co-star Joshua McGuire play Hamlet’s faithless schoolfriends, who pootle around the corridors of Elsinore discussing existence, identity, chance, coincidence and mortality (‘death: the absence of presence’). Radcliffe’s defining attribute, bemused amiability, works well here and he doesn’t seem to mind that he’s being comprehensively outgunned by the goofily funny McGuire. And both are thrust into the shadows by the volcanic arrival of David Haig, who gives a masterclass in dominance as a street hustler who leads a troupe of strolling thesps.

The show is excellent to look at and it has a unique intellectual magic. The topics discussed by the idling philosophers include the following: what is the probability that the rules governing probability in our universe will operate in an alternative universe? There. One feels quite clever having merely written that down. Which is the special appeal of Tom Stoppard’s script. Its sparkling wordplay creates an ersatz erudition that steals into every corner of the house, and the spectators leave in a state of synthetic euphoria as if having just been nominated for the Solzhenitsyn Prize.

Playwright Steve Waters works like an oceanographer. He can plunge into any habitat on earth and emerge with a perfect snapshot of the monsters he has seen.