It seems compulsory just at present that every major revival of a play by Tom Stoppard should star either Tom Hollander (currently in Travesties at the Apollo) or a plausible Hollander lookalike such as Joshua McGuire, who plays the more philosophically inclined back end of the titular duo here.

Stoppard’s breakthrough play, being revived for the golden jubilee of its London première on the same stage, is (as one character describes it) the usual stuff only inside out. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor characters in Hamlet, tasked with trying to gain his confidence and glean the reasons for his mental turbulence. Stoppard focuses on Ros & Guil (as the script designates them), with the main figures of the Danish court appearing only occasionally to recite a few of Shakespeare’s lines before our hapless pair return to their forlorn attempts to get a handle on goings-on either specifically at Elsinore or in general. They’re endlessly perplexed about what it is that makes a life – at beginning, middle or end – and what makes one’s existence plausible. In these musings they are further befuddled by the Player (leader of the company who stage the play-within-a-play in Hamlet), who is all about giving a bravura show.

McGuire is a rising actor and well equipped for Guil’s reflections and Beckettesque double-acts with his more placid other half... who, let’s be honest, will be getting the lion’s share of the attention, since he is played by Daniel Radcliffe. Radcliffe has a terrific instinct for choosing his stage roles, but once in them he doesn’t always catch fire: although by temperament and personality he makes a fine Ros, there are a number of occasions here when he tips over from high-speed patter into gabbling. No such problems for David Haig in flowing mane and mystical tattoos as the Player: he knows that his character may be a florid old hack but is still in far more control of these oblique events than the central couple. David Leveaux’s production canters along (perhaps too swiftly at times) and takes delight in both the wordplay and the metatheatrical business which runs through it. It’s a good time for early Stoppard on the London stage, especially if you’re a smart, cherubic actor.

Written for the Financial Times.