Tom Stoppard's 2006 play, Rock 'n' Roll -- about music and a whole lot more -- gets a splendid southeastern debut in South Florida at Mosaic Theater. Hop-scotching between Cambridge, England, and Prague, and between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the openness of 1990, the play is rich with riffs on politics and friendship, ancient Greek poetry and cancer, and matters of mentorship and of mind vs. brain and of spy vs. spy. There's love and marriage to deal with. And there's the role of rock to consider: the Beach Boys and Rolling Stones among them, but mostly ex-Pink Floyder Syd Barrett and banned Czech band Plastic People of the Universe.
The playbill -- at the Mosaic, as it did on Broadway -- comes with an insert that explains the background of the story and defines many of the non-fiction names that pop up in the tale, but it really isn't necessary. So don't be put off: Rock 'n' Roll, for all its philosophical trappings, is a satisfying piece of theater. It makes for a good night out.
(A note: I caught "Rock 'n' Roll" on Broadway one night when I found myself in New York with just enough time to choose a play and get to a theater. No time to read the insert. Basic knowledge of the Prague Spring and that the Oxbridge universities have been places of various left-leaning politics were enough to let me enjoy the play.)
You needn't catch all the cultural references to appreciate the piece; it's enough that you care about Stoppard's searching characters, and you do with this production from Mosaic executive artistic director Richard Jay Simon.
In Cambridge, Czech graduate student Jan, not far from getting his second doctorate degree, is saying goodbye to Max, his mentor and a lifelong communist (he was born in 1917), and Max's wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Esme. It's 1968 and, with nothing more than his albums of rock 'n' roll, Jan is headed back to Czechoslovakia because he expects a new type of communism -- "a communist society with proper trade unions, legal system, no censorship, progressive rock" -- to take root there.
He will be disappointed. The repressive government prevents the Plastic People of the Universe from performing. He'll try to make sense of it. "They lost their professional license -- undesirable elements, you know. "Their songs are morbid, they dress weird, they look like they're on drugs, and one time they sacrificed a chicken on stage," Jan says, "but otherwise it's a mystery."
Jan isn't the only one at a loss. Max is an unapologetic old-school communist who grouses that communism had "the right idea in the wrong conditions for 50 years and counting." Wife Eleanor rails against the cancer that ravages her body; she's teaching the ancient poetic fragments of Sappho to a student who flirts with her husband. Esme, their flower child daughter, emerges as grownup with both a touch of wistfulness and a smart daughter, Alice (Dana Colagiovanni playing both Alice and the young Esme).
Antonio Amadeo delivers a nuanced Jan -- hopeful, naïve, working the system, deceived and deceiving, repentant and joyful through the years.
Gordon McConnell's complicated Max is at times self-centered, seemingly all but clueless when it comes to his wife, but with true affection for her. And Laura Turnbull does double duty as angry, perceptive, no-nonsense Eleanor in Act I scenes that crackle and ache, and, in Act II, as grown daughter, Esme, who over the years has had passing encounters with drugged-up Cambridge resident Syd Barrett.
Scenes are set in 1968, '69, '71, '72, '74, '75, '76, '77, '87 and '90. Costumes help mark the passage of time and define the characters in this big-cast play. (The production might benefit from some supporting players projecting more, but perhaps they were concentrating on the British accents, which seem quite good when audible.)
Mosaic's set reflects the sweep of the play. The audience sits on both sides of a long rectangle. At one end is Max's comfortable home near the university, at the other is Jan's small apartment in Prague with lots of 33 1/3 rpm albums on its few shelves. Stoppard separates the many scenes with sudden blackouts and brief bits of songs that end as suddenly as they began. Among the records required by the Czech-born and British-raised playwright: "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
