["Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth"] is the latest prank by Tom Stoppard to reach our shores. Actually, it's two pranks, since it consists of a couple of little plays that the ingenious author has contrived to join loosely together but that have the air of having been surprised into marriage by the universal shotgun known as giving the customers their money's worth…. These plays combine comically abbreviated versions of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" with the kind of frisky finger exercises in wordplay and logic that are Stoppard's favorite stock-intrade. In a program note, Stoppard mentions that "Dogg's Hamlet" derives from a section of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigation," but don't be frightened; potted Wittgenstein quickly gives way to potted Shakespeare—a "Hamlet" that for pace and violent high spirits resembles nothing so much as a tragic Punch and Judy show….

The second play, dedicated to the Czechoslovakian writer Pavel Kohout, is a...