Rock 'N' Roll
**** Royal Court, London
Michael Billington
Thursday June 15, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Rock 'N' Roll, Royal Court, London
Brian Cox as the Marxist don Max and Sinead Cusack as Eleanor in Rock 'N' Roll. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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.
Article continues
In plot terms, Stoppard deals with the contrasting fortunes of two worlds: that of Czech freedom-fighters and Cambridge Marxists. The former are represented by Jan: an exiled Czech who returns to Prague in '68, at the time of the Soviet takeover, and who, although primarily a rock-loving non-combatant, finds himself inexorably drawn into dissidence and Charter 77. Meanwhile the Cambridge left is powerfully embodied by Max: an unrepentant Marxist don, as old as the October Revolution, who is still drawn to "this beautiful idea".
What is fascinating about the play is that there are no easy victories. Jan is no heroic martyr, but an observer more drawn to the subversive band, the Plastic People of the Universe, than to protest-movements: it is only the steady erosion of Czech freedom that turns him into a dissident. Stoppard treats Max's convictions seriously and allows him to score strong debating-points: he is, in fact, the first sympathetic Marxist I can recall in all Stoppard's work.
In presenting two worlds, Stoppard also suggests that, while the Czechs have fought strenuously for their freedoms, we are allowing ours to slip from our grasp. In a crucial second-act dinner-party scene, Stoppard brings together Max, Jan and various representatives of two different cultures. But it is Lenka, an expatriate Czech don who seems to voice his sentiments when she urges Jan not to return, saying "This place has lost its nerve. They put something in the water since you were here. It's a democracy of obedience."
But although Stoppard takes a pessimistic view of an England that seems to have lost any sustaining faith or principles, his play paradoxically finds hope in the liberating spirit of rock'n'roll. Each scene is punctuated by the sounds of legendary groups including the Stones, Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. Even though he acknowledges that they have given way to the blander effusions of today, he constantly uses music as a symbol of pagan ecstasy.
All this is clearly articulated in Trevor Nunn's excellent production, in which the scenes are spliced with exultant rock. And the other great virtue of the production is that allows ample scope for each intellectual viewpoint. Brian Cox exudes massive power as the Marxist Max who goes on fighting to the end even after the loss of his wife and his political faith. Rufus Sewell as Jan charts immaculately the character's gradations from passive observer to disgraced dissident and shows him emerging on the other side. And Sinead Cusack, doubling as Max's cancer-stricken wife and grown-up daughter, and Peter Sullivan as a Havel-like Czech protester turn in equally strong performances.
But 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.
· Until July 15. Box Office: 020 7565 5000
