HAMLET is not, generally, a play that is noted for its comic potential.

So it could only have been a writer with the imaginative genius of Tom Stoppard who could take the minor, and not particularly likeable, characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from the Shakespeare original and recreate them in a setting that is simultaneously surreal, hilarious and tragic.

The play has some of the quickest, funniest dialogue you are ever likely to hear in a theatre - remember that Stoppard's later opus includes the screenplay for the hit comedy Shakespeare in Love - and, as the lead characters, Leigh Symonds and Graeme Hawley create such perfect timing and chemistry that it is hard for the audience not to feel bad about their inevitable fate.

But as exceptional as the pair are - and they are laugh-out-loud funny - they are matched equally by the almost demoniac Michael Jenn as the Player.

And here is a secret about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - for while Stoppard may be legendary for his wordplay, his physical humour is much less remarked upon.

But watching the players leap from rhetoric to rapine to gory death ("Blood is compulsory," says the Player) the audience is caught up in the hysterical swell of energy.

Tempering the comic action is Phil Rowson, brooding as Hamlet himself, Andonis Anthony as Claudius, Meriel Scholfield as Gertrude and Ruth Westley as Ophelia.

But while Rowson has definite charisma, there is no doubt that the play belongs to the player company, and to our two hapless heroes.