STOPPARD'S virtuoso displays of verbal pyrotechnics and intellectual gymnastics have rarely been unveiled to greater dramatic effect than here, in his first stage play which, 30 years after its premiere, has lost none of its flourish and swagger in this glorious, high gloss Royal National Theatre production.

It established his love of the elaborate theatrical conceit, here focused on two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet and emanating from Claudius and Gertrude's confusing farewell, which appeared, to the mischievous ear of Stoppard, to fuse the two courtiers into a single character - "Thanks Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern". "Thanks Guildenstem and gentle Rosencrantz." Thus the spotlight is turned on these two formed college friends of the melancholy Prince of Denmark who in a play within a play within a play, find themselves at the mercy of a bewildering sequence of "real" and "illusory" events for between the political manoeuvrings of the Court at Elsinore and the shenanigans of a band of travelling actors and their posturing, rascally leader, the Player King.

Matthew Francis's seamless production moves smoothly and confidently between scenes at court, where Shakespeare's lines are given a deliciously inky, velvety setting in Les Brotherston's design, and the bleached, empty world of the imagination into which Stoppard has injected his own oblique alternative reality.

Simon Russell Beale and Adrian Scarborough are an inspired pairing as the two courtiers, each providing, in intellect, in stature and in linguistic dexterity, the opposite side of the same spinning coin. And what joy to behold the craft of that supreme actor Alan Howard at full stretch as the outrageously over the top Player King, proclaiming the miracle of theatre in its ability to create life out of thin air and to cheat death, night after night. Sadly, it is not a choice which ever comes within the grasp of our two optimistic gamblers.