48 LISTENER SEPTEMBER 7 2019
BOOKS&CULTURE
by SALLY BLUNDELLF
rom punk poet and pub per-
former to Poet Laureate – it is,
agrees David Eggleton, a hop,
skip and a jump from where he
was, “or maybe it is a knight’s
move in a game of chess, or simply the
way things have turned out. I just write
my poems and, voilà, they speak of the
condition we are in, and there is an
audience out there.”
It’s his first day on the job, the Listener
is the first call on his Poet Laureate
hotline, and Eggleton sounds gratified- “No, keen, keen is a better word” –
about taking on the two-year role.
“I never had that career path in mind,
but if I look back, I see it is a logical
culmination. I have always written
public poetry and poetry about history
and this question of identity, my own
identity and the identity of this country.
The things I write about are very much
related to the way the nation has
bear in R&G, a play that is wide open to
interpretation and contains a head-swim-
ming number of puns.
“It is known as a comedy, but some-
times it goes too dark as well,” she says.
“It can get a bit fruitcake-y. You can still
go down a nightmare path but it depends
whether you’re going to stay there the
whole time or lift yourself out. What
he [Stoppard] wanted was at least some
exploration into the comedic side of it,
and that’s where we are going.”
R&G is an inversion of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, with its fringe characters brought
to the fore while the tragedy’s major
players emerge as occasional, ineffectual
figures. As in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are courtiers, unwitting
accessories to their written, immutable
fate. They look to The Player for guid-
ance through the hall of mirrors they find
themselves in, but she’s not necessarily on
their side.
“I would say The Player is a provo-
cateur, a bit of a trickster, a little bit
cunning because The Player knows their
history and they don’t,” she says. “If you
understand that the play is existential
and abstract, it doesn’t matter if you don’t
know Hamlet. All that matters is that you
are lost with Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern. And, if you do know Hamlet, then
you can see things from The Player’s per-
spective. Those two characters are relying
on this character and the decadent, seedy
troupe of players wandering this strange
world.”
Stoppard – who was just 29 when he
wrote the play – was emphatic when
asked what R&G was “about” when it
opened in New York a couple of years
later: “It’s about to make me rich,” he
responded. The playwright hoped to
further that ambition when he adapted
the script for the film version he directed
in 1990, starring Gary Oldman as Ros-
encrantz, Tim Roth as Guildenstern and
Richard Dreyfuss as The Player, but it was
an effort largely dismissed by reviewers for
not having escaped its stage origins.
“With all due respect to Tom Stop-
pard, I don’t think the play is suitable
for film, and I still think that, back then,
it was not irreverent enough,” Te Wiata
says. “Stoppard’s complaint was that
other companies had considered it too
reverently. This play,” she says with great
emphasis, “is going to be a lot more silly
and crazy.”T
he cast, directed by experimental-
theatre darling Benjamin Henson, is
a mix of newcomers, including Tom
Clarke as Rosencrantz, Freya Finch as Guil-
denstern and Joe Witkowski as Hamlet,
and seasoned artists such as Lisa Chappell
as Gertrude, Bruce Phillips as Polonius and
Simon Prast as the villain, Claudius.
Te Wiata would seem to be in good
company among her fellow veterans.
Her career means it’s been a lonely life at
times for the only child of opera star and
master-carver Inia Te Wiata, who died
when she was eight, and actor-writer Beryl
Te Wiata, who died two years ago.
“Yeah, that’s the gypsy existence,” she
says. “That’s why I decided not to have
children. I decided to give my life – give
my life,” she repeats with a flourish – “to
this craft. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t, other
times, I’m really pleased I did. I basically
married it. It hasn’t let me down like
perhaps it might have if I’d decided on a
human partner,” she adds, very archly.
Well, I venture carelessly, she’s been
lucky to have had such a full career. A
raised eyebrow is the deserved response.
The Player is a bit cross.
“You could say lucky, but that makes
it sound as though it’s all just luck. But it
isn’t. A lot of it is dedication and surren-
dering,” she says.
“I’ve got no security because I’ve got to
go and do this play or that play and now
I’m going to Australia and so I’m cut off
from everybody – just all that.
“It’s a roller coaster and you can get sick
of it as you get older and wish that more
would happen in your vicinity. But so
much of it does move around and in some
ways the instability is part and parcel
of the job. You have to pull the rug out
sometimes and I think the art does that
for you.” lRosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, ASB
Waterfront Theatre, September 11-26.“Stoppard complained
that other companies
had considered [the
play] too reverently. This
play is going to be a lot
more silly and crazy.”
In from
the fringe
People now trust
poems more than
they trust news, says
new Poet Laureate
David Eggleton.
POETRY