Miranda Colchester & Rufus Sewell
in Rock 'n' Roll
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The world premiere of Tom Stoppard's
Rock 'n' Roll took place at the Royal Court on 14 June, in a production directed by Trevor Nunn and with a cast led by Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack and Rufus Sewell. Immediately after its Royal Court run (to 15 July), it will transfer to the West End's Duke of York's (running from 22 July to 24 September). Spanning the recent history of Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution, the play observes the events from the double perspective of Prague, where a rock ‘n’ roll band came to symbolize resistance to the regime, and the British left, represented by a Communist philosopher at Cambridge. Were critics rocked by the new work?
Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:
Matt Wolf in his Theatre.com Review: “Those awaiting a reteaming of one of the most galvanic stage pairings of the 1990s can start exulting right now: Rufus Sewell, the fine-boned actor who burst to the forefront of the British theatre as the original Septimus in Arcadia in 1993, has reteamed with the playwright Tom Stoppard to equally electrifying effect. As Jan, a somewhat reluctant Czech dissident whose life is intricately bound up with the popular music of the period, Sewell gives galloping force to Stoppard's latest play, Rock 'n' Roll, in a performance likely to have the same effect on audiences that the Rolling Stones, amongst many others, have on the various characters in Stoppard's long, sometimes clunky but, in the end, emotionally liberating play. One's last image of Sewell is of a man in full, unself-conscious thrall both to a woman (Sinead Cusack's onetime flower-child, Esme) and to a sound that between them transcend politics—just as Rock 'n' Roll, for all its debates on such topics as Marxist dogma, does as well.”
Benedict Nightingale of The London Times: "The protagonist is Jan, a young academic sent to Britain to snoop for Czechoslovakia but too much of a maverick and too little the communist to please the spymasters. Back home he keeps his head down and indulges his passion, which is listening to his rock ’n’ roll records, but his avid support of a group, improbably called The Plastic People of the Universe, lands him in dead-end jobs and in prison as a “parasite.” And it’s a journey that brings a superb performance from Rufus Sewell: now spry, now frantic, now defeated, then quietly, movingly resilient and always the heart of Stoppard’s fascinating play and Trevor Nunn’s finely acted production. What’s the point? That will keep real-life academics busy for years, but, for me, it’s mainly to be found in rock ’n’ roll itself. We hear snatches of songs from groups ranging from the Pink Floyd to U2, the Doors to the Stones and Mick Jagger, who last night sat beaming in the central stalls."
Michael Billington of The Guardian: "Tom Stoppard's astonishing new play is, amongst many other things, a hymn to Pan. It starts in a Cambridge garden in 1968 with a piper playing the Syd Barrett song, ‘Golden Hair.’ It ends in Prague in 1990 with film of a Rolling Stones concert led by Mick Jagger, who was in the Royal Court first-night audience. And, although Stoppard's play deals with Marxism, materialism and Sapphic poetry, it is above all a celebration of the pagan spirit embodied by rock 'n' roll... The remarkable thing about the play is that it touches on so many themes, registers its lament at the erosion of freedom in our society and yet leaves you cheered by its wit, buoyancy and belief in the human spirit."
Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph: "Tom Stoppard won't thank me for saying so, but despite his perennially youthful rock star good looks, he turns 70 next year. What's astonishing though is that this new piece feels like a young man's play. There is an energy, rawness and passion here one doesn't associate with the elegant and witty Stoppard, passages of unbuttoned emotion that go straight to the heart... This new piece smells, well, of sex and drugs and rock and roll. It also feels like an exceptionally personal play, for Stoppard appears to be imagining what his life might have been like had he returned to his native Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, rather than beginning a new life in England... I was tempted to end this review by saying It's only rock 'n' roll but I like it. In fact, it's about much more than rock 'n' roll, and I love it."
Paul Taylor of The Independent: "At what cultural event could you have seen, among the punters, Vaclav Havel and Mick Jagger, Timothy Garton Ash and Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd? Answer: at the press night of Rock 'n' Roll, Tom Stoppard's complex and moving new play about the link between rock music, East European dissidence and the fall of Communism. Initially weird-seeming juxtapositions in the audience (including the endearingly absurd sight of Havel seated, thanks to a quirk of the ticketing, next to "Acid" Raine Spencer) are, of course, given the author, matched by strange but ultimately rewarding collocations in the piece which draws together such topics as Sappho and Syd Barrett, brain science and spiteful junk journalism... Some of the intellectual debates have a rather rigged ring and Max feels throughout like a convenient amalgam of different types of academic. I preferred the parts where Stoppard the Romantic asserts himself in ways that are less easy to paraphrase. It remains an impressive play, likely to expand in the mind."
Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard: "Innocent playgoers, who expect the theatre to stir their emotions and leave their minds on hold, beware! Rock ‘n’ Roll only fills the gaps between scenes. Watching Tom Stoppard's extraordinary, epic drama of politics, persecution and protest in 20th-century Czechoslovakia, with Brian Cox's uncouth Marxist professor at Cambridge, passionately clinging to his Communist convictions while the Perestroika Revolution sidles up to him, is rather like struggling to answer a compulsory degree question in Advanced Stoppardian studies... This is not quite first-rate Stoppard but still ought to generate a big and serious stir."