‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’ production a dream for director

It's typical for theatrical productions to precede opening night with a preproduction period. What isn't typical is for that preproduction period to last a decade.

Take, for instance, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," which runs this weekend and next at the College of Southern Nevada's BackStage Theatre.

"This production is a 10-year dream for me," explains director Michael Kimm, an actor/director who also is a Clark County School District theater teacher.

The Tony Award-winning existential tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard offers a backstage, back-seat retelling of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" through the eyes of the play's wilfully uncomprehending and fatally passive courtiers.

"I had the concept for the show when I was 19, right after 9/11," says Kimm, then a theater student at New York University.

In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, "I kind of saw around us our sort of national consciousness dissolve into a bunch of sheep," Kimm says. "We all became this sort of directionless mob, and we were really desperate to have someone tell us what to do ... where we should go or who we should be."

Just like, Kimm notes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who in "Hamlet" consistently recuse themselves from taking control of their own lives and who, consequently, have their fate determined by others.

"Obviously, in this show, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are passive entities in their own life," Kimm says, who make "no active choices through the course of the play" and ultimately "just step off the stage and just cease to be."

Struck by the parallels, Kimm directed a portion of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" for a directing class. And, he says, "in exploring it, I found this play, like all existential plays, speaks to all power being vested in the individual for the individual's life, and Stoppard is a huge proponent of that."

"So," he says, "it rang very true to me."

In the years since, Kimm says he saw the U.S. go "into a war that had no point," suffer "the worst downturn since the Great Depression" and saw Americans "giving away our freedoms and our liberties to the government."

So, Kimm says, the play "rings truer than ever."

However, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" isn't a political play. As Stoppard himself put it, Kimm says, "anybody that doesn't look at it as a comedy isn't looking at it the right way."

"As we were working on it, we definitely see it as a comedy, most certainly. But, certainly, it is a play that's full of hilarity and humility, and it's funny and touchingly poignant at the same time, the latter because we can all see ourselves in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and their desire to be taken in hand and led."

The play also features the wit and wordplay of Stoppard and is, Kimm says, "raucously hilarious."

"It's so rich and deep, and there are so many different ways you can play with it."

Kimm is amazed that the production he has been planning in his head for 10 years finally is being transformed into actors-and-sets reality. As he discusses, in great detail, the themes of the play, Kimm interrupts himself.

"Can you tell I've been thinking about this for 10 years?" he asks, laughing.

But, Kimm admitted last week, "I'm really excited. In a week, I'm going to see all of the effects with costumes and sound cues. I'll be here sitting in the dark taking notes and kind of squealing with glee."

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.