The play that made Tom Stoppard famous, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, opens with the ideal stage scene: Ros and Guil, those identical functionaries taken from "Hamlet," are killing time by tossing coins. Since Shakespeare wrote the script for their fate, there is never any question about the result: heads each and every time. Ros says with an embarrassed laugh, "Getting a little bit of a bore, isn't it.
A touch of the Rosencrantzes could be excused for Stoppard, a master of meta-theatrics, more than fifty years later. His most recent play, "Leopoldstadt," received ecstatic reviews when it premiered in London in January 2020. There were rumours that it would soon transfer to Broadway. Naturally, the pandemic and universal theatre closures followed. There were only twelve more weeks of the production when it returned to the stage in a covid-spooked London last year. Covid, once more, abruptly put a stop to plans for a North American premiere in Toronto at the beginning of this year. Tails all the way.
