 | |||
| FEATURES | BLOGS | DAILY DIG | GEAR |
Rock 'n' Roll
Famous playwright blasts through history
By JENNIFER CHOI
del.ico.us
reddit!
From Britain to Broadway, esteemed playwright Tom Stoppard's newest love story, Rock 'n' Roll, has come to Boston's Huntington Theatre. The critically acclaimed author who also co-wrote Brazil (nominated for two Oscars, including Best Screenplay) and the Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love, Stoppard fuses the familiar events and ideas of historical fiction with fantastic language and refreshingly crude humor.
A testament to youth and rebellion, Rock 'n' Roll sways with history's riffs, and does it with an ever-widening scope. Director Carey Perloff resurrects the spirit of '68 in the ambitious work that covers over 20 years in less than three hours. Based on actual events, Stoppard's story explores history through the perspective of a Czech Ph.D. student named Jan.
"Over the course of the play, he [Jan] becomes more and more politically active," says Tony Award-nominee Manoel Feliciano, who plays Jan. "But he starts out as someone who doesn't really care. He just wants to be left alone with his records."
Jan travels from Cambridge, England, to his home in Czechoslovakia during 1968's Prague Spring. Caught between his infatuations with The Who, Syd Barrett and Prague's own The Plastic People of the Universe, Jan is oblivious to the tightening Soviet grip on Prague's blossoming youth.
In Prague, Jan and Ferdinand (Jud Williford) debate music and politics—while in Cambridge, Max (Jack Willis), a stuffy British professor, tries to defend his Communist ideals while balancing his chaotic home life. René Augesen plays Max's cancer-stricken wife, Eleanor. Augesen's first-act performance suspends over a sometimes cluttered plotline. Only a "minor character," Eleanor emerges as the most loveably genuine personality in the entire play due to Augesen's powerfully emotional performance.
Rock 'n' Roll gives a lightning-fast re-enactment of the 20 years leading up to the Rolling Stone's famous 1990 show in Prague. Yet, past the pandemonium, one theme remains constant: the power of music. "All of this music was illegal in the Soviet Block," explains director Carey Perloff, "and in this very gray, anonymous world, every now and then a great album would be spirited in. It was sort of oxygen for people living in that regime."
As audiences feverishly scramble to straighten their facts and characters, Rock 'n' Roll ultimately creates more questions than answers. Spot-on performances and impressive set designs can't save Rock 'n' Roll from the wild mess it is on the page. With flashing strobe lights, fog machine madness and the blasting of "You Got Me Rocking," Rock 'n' Roll's sudden ending sums up its overall effect on audiences: dazed and confused.
ROCK 'N' ROLL
UNTIL 12.7.08
THE HUNTINGTON THEATRE
264 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON
617.266.0800
SHOWTIMES VARY/$22-$77.50
HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG
