Customer Reviews

Rock 'n' Roll: A New Play

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On January 11, 2008, I saw Tom Stoppard's Rock `n' Roll on Broadway with Brian Cox and Sinead Cusack in starring roles. Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia and left with his family at an early age to escape from the Hitler terror. The play is about the Communist rule in his native country and the power of rock and roll to help breach cracks in the totalitarian regime. The music of the young was probably more influential and revolutionary than the endless petitions by the dissidents.
As usual with a Stoppard play, it is talky, clever, more focused on the political and philosophical than the truly dramatic. There's no question that Stoppard is bright and witty, but unfortunately his plays can be murky at times. The scenes in the play are separated by segments of rock and roll tracks by the Rolling Stones, the Plastic People, Pink Floyd, John Lennon, and others.
The women in this play and his "Coast of Utopia" are more vibrant, more dramatically potent, more believable, and draw more of an emotional response from the audience than his male characters who blather on and on, and who are more political, more theoretical, and ineffective. One scene near the end of Act One between Max and his wife Eleanor in which she confronts him with the cancer killing her is an emotionally draining one for the audience and the dramatic highpoint of the play. Stoppard's women get to you in your gut. His men at times seem to be drowning in gibberish.
There are few playwrights as daring, innovative, and intellectual as Stoppard, but there are other playwrights who are more dramatically and emotionally disturbing.

I saw a production of the play recently in St. Paul. I couldn't hear most of it--my problem, not Stoppard's--so I bought a copy to read and I was disappointed.

The play covers a very long period of time in many short scenes with many, too many, characters. The lives of the individual characters are not presented clearly. I had trouble matching couples as they fell in and out of love over several decades.

The play has a thesis, that music, that rock 'n roll, was at the heart of the significant political events that culminated in the independence of Czechoslovakia. I do not know nearly enough Czech history to form my own opinion but Stoppard does not make the case. So the play is not moving. Most of us would want to sympathize with the rebels but Stoppard's narrative is muddy. I came away with the view that Stoppard thinks the rock and rollers were effective precisely because they were not political. Maybe so but I don't see it.

Stoppard's usual wit is largely lacking. It would be unfair to say the play is preachy but Stoppard apparently felt he had to explain at length things that younger spectators/readers wouldn't know. The old Marxist professor tells us everything that has happened since 1917.

I bought this play because I was going to see the Huntington Theater production in Boston and as my hearing deteriorates I like to read plays before seeing them. This is really a fine play and although it deals with big ideas it is a lot more passionate and less cerebral than I expected of Stoppard. I'm not much of a play-goer, but for what it's worth it was one of the best plays I have seen in recent years. I found it well worth my time and money to read the book, and it was interesting to see some differences between the Broadway version (documented in the book) and the Boston version in the last scene. Both scenes work well, but I think the Boston version is slightly tighter.

Rock 'n' Roll: A New Play
I am taking a class, studying playwrights Harold Pinter, August Wilson, and the genius of Tom Stoppard. Thanks to Amazon.com, the paperback edition of Tom Stoppard's Rock 'N' Roll arrived in excellent condition and in plenty of time for my class. Rock 'n' Roll, winner of London Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play, is set in August 1968. The Russian tanks are rolling into Prague. Stoppard's sweeping and passionalte play spans two countries, three generations, and 22 turbulent years. In the end, love remains ---and so does rock 'n' roll. This is a funny, wise, and triumphant play.

I purchased the book, "Rock 'n Roll" because I was going to see a performance of the play. I knew that with many characters in the play, plus transferring the action between Prague and Cambridge would be confusing. I was already acquainted with the characters and scenes so I was comfortable at the performance. Stoppard is difficult. However, after the performance in discussion with friends, we found the play to be enlightening. I owe most of my participation to having read the book. I do not think I would have read the book without plans to see the play.

Stoppard is a genius. Although the play is much better on stage, the script is a great read. I would highly recommend it.

This is a sophisticated play about the tribulations of Czechoslovakia as seen from England. The author himself was Czech living in England; his main character returns to his home country (the author himself did not). But the play is also very much about human relations, not just politics. It is a play worth seeing as well as reading.