Great Regulars: [Trevor Nunn and Tom Stoppard] laugh, but Trev

is uncomfortable with these evasions. "It won't do if you have the task of directing . . . there's little doubt that the title holds the key to the play--"Are Dead"--in exactly the same way that Hamlet is Shakespeare's play about death. So the subject of this play is death, and whether our lives are fated or random, and, as we progress towards death, how we think about death in terms of whether we have free will. When they are on the boat in the play, they do many energetic and extraordinary things, but they don't alter where the boat is going."

from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: Trevor Nunn and Tom Stoppard

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