Absurdist theater may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Tom Stoppard may be the best way to taste the brew.

Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” is the next play on at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, and director Katherine Woodzick has quite a pot to prepare.

Stoppard’s plays ask a lot of their audiences. Have your wit sharpened before you come and be prepared to laugh, because the ride will be nothing if not a bit of intriguing fun.

Hamlet’s dazed and confused courtiers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, wax philosophic about life, death and the puzzlement of language and its meaning while the mostly melancholy cast of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” work through their own tragedy in the background.

An absurdist play with a tension-filled waiting game where everyone seems to know the outcome except for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the title is taken directly from the final scene of “Hamlet.”

The play focuses on these two childhood friends of the Dane, portrayed by Stoppard as helpless clowns with an inability to cope with their illogical world.

Unlike traditional protagonists, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are incapable of independent action because their world provides no sufficient meaning.

They wait for something to happen, for someone to come along and provide some information, a bit of direction or, hope of all hopes, meaning.

But in their world of illusion and fiction, such reassurance never arrives and they never quite grasp who they are — characters in a play — and where they belong in the world.

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered,” Guildenstern utters at one point.

These philosophical remunerations which are heard throughout the play, hint at the godlike control the playwright holds over his characters and at what he has in store for the unsuspecting fools who can’t even guess their own fate, let alone change it.

Imitation is a form of flattery and the British Stoppard pays homage not only to Shakespeare, but to two other writers.

Stoppard’s basis for the almost plotless play is gleaned from what may have happened to these two characters off stage in the fiction that is “Hamlet.”

But he also borrows from the Irish absurdist master Samuel Beckett and his play “Waiting for Godot,” as well as from the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by the American poet T.S. Eliot.

The derivation from “Waiting for Godot” is clear, as illusion and reality mix in that play too, and the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend much of the play in a verbal tennis match, their constant questioning never revealing answers but demonstrating only their anxiety and a way to pass the time.

From Eliot’s poem Stoppard borrows the idea of characters haunted by the dull, uneventful and mediocre life led by a fear of making decisions. Prufrock, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, lives in a world that is the same today as it was the day before and will be tomorrow.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

However, unlike Beckett and Eliot, Stoppard’s protagonists have something those other characters don’t, friendship. And friendship gives them something to value, even if heroic aspirations are out of their reach. They just want to survive, and their camaraderie is what keeps them going; it’s what gives the audience a note of pleasure and hope on which to hang their hats in such a wasteland of illogic and doom.

Woodzick is working with a relatively young cast who range in age from as young as 13 to adult, with the 17-year-old Max Cole-Takanikos playing Rosencrantz and 19-year-old Kenton Therien playing Guildenstern.

But Woodzick said she is impressed with a cast that is intelligent, articulate and willing to explore the difficult text.

“I’m really impressed that Max and Kenton bring so much out of the text,” Woodzick said.

“The challenge has been that these two people carry the show and remain onstage for the play’s entirety. It’s an incredible test of endurance, and they’ve handled that so well,” she said.

Therien said it hasn’t been easy, but that’s the best thing about doing the role.

“This is the biggest challenge that has ever been given to me,” he said. “I am able to make choices in terms of the way the character acts many times.”

“However, the choices need to be perfect and incredibly well thought out,” he added.

Cole-Takanikos said Stoppard is his favorite playwright, and agreed that the challenge of the text keeps it interesting.

“It’s crucial to get the beats and pauses just right, and to be able to respond at breakneck speed,” he said.

“But the lines he has written are so natural to say that you don’t even have to act them to make them sound good.”

Woodzick is looking forward to welcoming an audience.

“I think this community is ready for this play,” she said.

“I saw someone check the play out of the library, so I think there is an audience who has been waiting for this.”

Woodzick is excited, too, by the original score being created for the production by South Whidbey High School student Ian Marsanyi for his senior project.

Marsanyi has created a variety of incidental music for piano, synthesizer and xylophone with minor percussion and vocal effects. He will perform the score live during the show, accompanied by his father, Robert Marsanyi.

“There are no weak links in this production,” Woodzick added. “Every rehearsal is energetic, and whether you know the play, or ‘Hamlet’ or neither, I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised.”

Tickets range in price from $12 to $16, with discounts available for students and groups. To buy tickets online Click here; or call 221-8268.