Sine Qua Nonchalance

People who’ve seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead — British playwright Tom Stoppard’s existentialist answer to Hamlet — know that Stoppard has a penchant for putting his characters in comically tight spots. They’re literally at sea in Rough Crossing, his 1985 adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle. Set aboard a transatlantic ocean liner — the S.S. Italian Castle, natch — Crossing charts the highjinks of two playwrights and a composer frantically working to finish a musical comedy. Up late, the trio overhears the leading lady (the composer’s crush) getting hot and heavy with the show’s male star. To preserve shipboard harmony, one dramaturge bribes the actors and writes the pair’s purple prose into the script. Boatloads of theatrical puns aid the ensuing confusion between life and art. A Waterbury Festival Players production boards “passengers” through July 5.