Tom Stoppard's ROCK 'n' ROLL Questions

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 6/9/07 at 1:06am

Hey Guys -

Earlier this evening I purchased a paperback edition of Tom Stoppard's ROCK 'n' ROLL. I was going to purchase the ALNM dvd, but thought otherwise. I want to get the dvd, so I'll ask for it as a birthday gift, I guess. I like to read, and feel that there's no better way to stimulate one's mind than to have a good read, right? I know that this show is making its Broadway transfer, from its sold-out engagement across the pond, in the fall. I'm curious as to what the story is really all about - From what I gather, it's 2 stories in one? I'm greatly intrigued, nontheless. I want to read the play first, and then, actually make my way to the Jacobs to see it in November. Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated. Many thanks.

Best,
- Mike

Updated On: 6/9/07 at 01:06 AM

[Smaxie]

Posted: 6/9/07 at 8:24am

It's not really two plays in one, but the location does switch between Cambridge and Prague with some frequency - and over a period of 22 years of Czech history, from Prague Spring in 1968 to just after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

Here is a review from Richard Ouzounian in the Toronto Star that is particularly helpful.

Rock 'n' roll and a revolution

Aug. 26, 2006. 01:00 AM

RICHARD OUZOUNIAN

THEATRE CRITIC

LONDON, ENGLAND—Tom Stoppard's latest play is called Rock 'n' Roll and it certainly lives up to its title.

It begins on an August night in 1968, with Syd Barrett, recently turfed from Pink Floyd, perched on a garden wall in Cambridge, England, serenading a teenage girl as Russian tanks roll into Czechoslovakia.

It ends 22 years later, on another August evening, at a Rolling Stones concert in Prague, which signals that the battle for personal liberty in the new Czech Republic is well and truly won.

In between, there are numerous rock selections to bridge the swiftly flying scenes, featuring the Stones, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys and a dissident Czech band called the Plastic People of the Universe.

The way that Stoppard keeps manipulating the music from the background to the foreground is just one of the amazing things about this deeply emotional yet profoundly intellectual play.

Stoppard never has one thing on his mind. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead introduced William Shakespeare to Samuel Beckett, Travesties put World War I into some sort of dramatic Cuisinart, while Arcadia juggled centuries and philosophies with the skill of a circus performer.

Rock 'n' Roll is no exception.

On one level, it's about what happened to the Czech Republic from 1968 through 1990. We see it all through the eyes of a young academic named Jan (Rufus Sewell, dazzlingly complex). He's in Cambridge when the Communists invade and he hurries home to be there, only to find himself disillusioned, then crushed and finally imprisoned for his dissident beliefs and his taste for Western music.

But while his story is playing itself out, we also look at the world back in Cambridge, where a once passionate Communist professor named Max (Brian Cox, taking no prisoners) copes with the loss of his ideals to politics and his wife to cancer at the same time.

That wife, Eleanor (Sinead Cusack, blazing brilliantly) keeps searching for intellectual rigour with the students she teaches Sappho to, even as her body is melting away.

"There just isn't time!" she explodes at one point and you realize that she's talking about herself, the Czech Republic, the Communist party, Syd Barrett and all of us at the same time.

The play's second act starts in 1989, after the so-called "Velvet Revolution," which ended two decades of Communist tyranny. Stoppard now has Cusack play her teenage daughter Esme from Act I (the one Syd Barrett was serenading), while the earlier young woman (Alice Eve, totally entrancing) now portrays Alice, her daughter.

It sounds complex and if you're not on your toes, it could turn into a blur. But Stoppard has a strong hand on the dramatic helm and director Trevor Nunn moves things along with a calm certainty that insures you always know where to look.

In many ways, the play is difficult to explain and that — ironically enough — is its strength. Stoppard knows that theatre is made up of moments as well as words and thoughts, so he provides plenty of them.

Max holding Eleanor tight in the depths of her despair, Esme remembering the way Syd Barrett once sang to her, Jan poring through the debris of his record collection that the Communists had destroyed — these all bring a lump to the throat.

In some of Stoppard's other supremely dazzling exercises, the intellectual distance between what he was discussing and us could occasionally cause a sort of dramatic chilliness.

Nothing of that sort happens in Rock 'n' Roll. The people and their problems are close enough to our experience for no such disconnect to occur.

And the ever-pulsing rhythm of the music underneath completes the equation. This is a play that gets inside your head and then keeps expanding until it finally explodes. When it does, you're likely to find yourself laughing and crying at the same time.

It's a complete dramatic experience and one that shouldn't be missed.

When people look back on this period in history, Rock 'n' Roll may be the best way of answering the question: What was it like to be alive during the final decades of the 20th century?