ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD at Sydney Theatre Company

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, pretty much everyone ends up dead - including the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

In Tom Stoppard's evergreen comic masterpiece, the hapless pair's last days are chronicled; days largely spent trying to make sense of their interactions with other characters as the epic Hamlet unspools just off stage. In the hands of director Simon Phillips, the wit and playfulness of Stoppard's writing will be front and centre.

Simon will direct a truly fabulous cast led in the title roles by superstar comedian/musician Tim Minchin and the irrepressible Toby Schmitz, most recently with us in another Stoppard classic, Travesties, in 2009. To realise this great playwright's brilliant vision, Phillips will reunite with sensational designer Gabriela Tylesova, with whom he has collaborated many times, including on the visually spectacular musical Love Never Dies.

It's absurdist, it's existential, it's meta-theatrical - but above all, it's Stoppard, Phillips, Schmitz and Minchin.