L.A. Theatre Works to Release Recording of ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD in September

L.A. Theatre Works has added Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to its extensive collection of state-of-the-art audio theater, the largest library of its kind in the world. Rosalind Ayres directs Tom Stoppard's wildly witty and inventive, Tony Award-winning first play, which is available for pre-order now and for digital download beginning September 2.

In what is recognized as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Stoppard takes two of the most incidental characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet and thrusts them into the limelight. Rosencrantz (Adhir Kalyan) and Guildenstern (Matthew Wolf) have been summoned by the King of Denmark (JD Cullum) to glean what afflicts their old college friend, Prince Hamlet (Seamus Dever). As the two protagonists meditate on fate and the inevitability of death, the events of Shakespeare's play unfold around them, and the audience gets to piece together the half-glimpsed, incomplete actions of the major players, who also include Gertrude (Susan Sullivan), Ophelia (Anna Lyse Erikson), Polonius (André Sogliuzzo) and The Player (Martin Jarvis).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was first staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 by the Oxford Theatre Group, and it premiered in London at the Old Vic in 1967. The Broadway production was nominated for eight Tony Awards and won four, including for Best Play. It also won Best Play from the New York Drama Critics Circle and Outstanding Production from the Outer Critics Circle. The New York Times called it, "very funny, very brilliant, very chilling."

L.A. Theatre Works stands apart in its approach to making great theater widely accessible and affordable, bringing plays into homes and classrooms of millions of theater lovers, teachers and students each year. Its catalog of nearly 600 recorded plays is the largest archive of its kind in the world, featuring classics by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and Lillian Hellman, as well as new works by Lynn Nottage, Charlayne Woodard, Jeanne Sakata and Herbert Siguenza - to name a few. The company's radio theater series broadcasts weekly on public radio stations across the U.S. and daily in China on the Radio Beijing Network.

The L.A. Theatre Works audio recording of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead will be available for digital download beginning September 2 and is currently available for pre-order for $20 at latw.org.