MAYBE it is coincidence, maybe it is logical - and how logic game master Tom Stoppard would love that - but two plays obsessed with death are running concurrently at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

They are in tandem at the birth of the new artistic directorship of Ian Brown. Birth and death, and the cycle of life, it was ever thus.

In Ben Brown's Larkin With Women in the Courtyard, the genially glum Philip Larkin is convinced he will die at 63 and does exactly that. In Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard's erudite drama from 1967, the clue lies in the title.

R & G spend all but the last minute of their three hours centre stage very much alive, passing their days in a maze of philosophical debate about who they are, why they are, where they are and where they may be going, in between their very occasional commitments as 'spear carriers' in Hamlet.

With so much time on their hands, British workmen would make a brew, have a KitKat, read a tabloid; by comparison, Shakespeare's bit-part players from his 1601 tragedy are re-invented by Stoppard as 20th century thinkers in suits.

As one door shuts, so does the next - 12 in all - at the outset of Gemma Bodinetz's production on a slate-grey stage reminiscent of a French farce, a graveyard and a school blackboard (Guildenstern takes to writing frantically on the floor in chalk). This is instantly a clever production of a smart-aleck play.

Like M & S and G & S, Morecambe & Wise and Dandelion & Burdock, R & G are a double act, their partnership being most reminiscent of another pair of mistrusting journeymen, Samuel Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting For Godot.

Then add the coin-tossing opening scene that recalls the logic games of Ionesco, and you have Shakespeare, Beckett, Ionesco, philosophy. It all sounds terribly high art, and it is, but the journey is enjoyable in the company of Scarborough actor Nick Bagnall's Guildenstern, fidgeting like Derek Randall at the crease and boundless in his bafflement as he bounces thoughts off Scotsman Tom Smith's more circumspect Rosencrantz.

Meanwhile, scenes from Hamlet provide further visual amusement, as director Bodinetz and designer Angela Davies allude to past productions, not least sending up Sir John Gielgud's famous performance.

Conclusion: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead good.

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Updated: 09:55 Tuesday, October 15, 2002