Tom Stoppard’s political piece, punctuated with the music of the late 60s cultural revolution, still has relevance today in its depiction of idealism and deception.
Jan (a Jacob Fortune-Lloyd full of optimism) is a student at Cambridge but is heading back to his birth country of Czechoslovakia after the forces of the Warsaw Pact invade. It’s summer, right at the end of the 60s.
His professor, Max (a marvellous and charismatic Nathaniel Parker), is an avowed communist, single-minded, brusque, and occasionally frustrated with the way of the world. No one can tell him he’s wrong.
At home with Max are wife Eleanor (beautifully judged by Nancy Carroll), a literary academic stricken with cancer, and their hippy daughter, Esme (a feisty Phoebe Horn). The marriage is strained with thin wisps of affection.
We move between Jan’s Czech experience and Max’s comfortable suburbia throughout Act 1, while Brendan O’Connor’s piper evokes the musical fragility of Syd Barrett, original frontman of Pink Floyd.
Music is key, as the title Rock ‘n’ Roll may suggest, with snatches of Floyd, the Velvet Underground, and the Fugs forming the soundtrack of dissidence and danger.
Jan only takes his records as luggage in his move from England; they act as symbols throughout the play as nuggets of freedom, whether the Western artists marked as subversive or home-grown bands like The Plastic People of the Universe.
Peripheral characters seem to be forever plotting: Milan (Colin Tierney) to gather covert intelligence; Ferdinand (Hasan Dixon) to gather signatures for his petitions; Magda (Georgia Landers) and Lenka (Anna Krippa) utilise sex for power.
It’s a world of shady meetings, secret files, subtle threats (or in the dying Eleanor’s case, not quite so subtle), and malicious snooping. It isn’t a million miles away from contemporary political shenanigans.
By the second act, we are in the times of Gorbachev and Peristroika, of reconstruction and a communist leader who embraces capitalism. Previously, people have been imprisoned for just being, whether questionable, unnecessary, or unemployed.
There’s a dinner party planned at Max’s. Carroll now plays Esme, Horn is her daughter Alice. Journalist dad Nigel (also Tierney), now married to fellow headline-chaser Candida (Emily Mytton), but is a free media any better than a state-dictated one?
Syd Barrett is still a spectre on the outside. We haven’t seen him, and we won’t, but Alice has befriended him, and if cruel headlines lampoon his state of mind, her kindness cushions the blow.
As for Jan, Esme, Max, and Lenka, time and circumstance have blunted them, but perhaps given them a sliver of hope. That’s what makes the final defiance of dancing to the music so cathartic.
Rock ‘n’ Roll is a powerful and intense piece of writing informed in part by Stoppard’s background. These are flawed people in a world that doesn’t make sense to them, and the performances are uniformly excellent.
A special nod to Carroll for dealing with a rude audience interruption about the stage cigarettes her character was consuming. A moment of improvision that gained applause!
Rock ‘n’ Roll, directed in traverse by Nina Raine, continues at Hampstead Theatre’s main house until 27 Jan with tickets here.
****
Image credit: Manuel Harlan