TOM Stoppard is the clever kid in your class.

He's so clever you almost want to slap him, but the man now knighted and dubbed our greatest living playwright is just so good at entertaining us you can forgive him for having a brain the size of a planet.

This was his first play, which burst onto the scene at the Edinburgh Festival, then made its debut at the Old Vic in 1967, when Stoppard was 30.

And even at that comparatively tender age the young scallywag was prepared to give his take on the greatest play ever written by extracting two characters from Hamlet, suspending them in a sort of timeless theatrical black hole and playing games with life, the universe and everything.

What's it all about? the pair ask repeatedly, unsure of where they are, what they're doing and even which is Rosencrantz and which Guildenstern.

In the meantime they bet on whether a coin will land heads or tails (it comes up heads every time) and play the game of questions, in which you can only speak in questions - an appropriate game for a play which gives no answers.

Weaving in and out of this enigmatic extravaganza are the characters from Hamlet, who include the travelling actors from Shakespeare's play who, at various times, turn into the Hamlet characters. Still with me?

Anyone who has seen Shakespeare in Love, scripted by Stoppard, will already have appreciated his genius at intertwining plot with play, which he does here with aplomb.

The play runs until Saturday. Box office: 01684 892277.

Review by STEVE EVANS