I’ll admit, when I first read Tom Stoppard’s Rock’n’Roll I did not understand it. And when I speak of my lack of understanding, I don’t mean, “What happened?” I know what happens in this play, I can comprehend the basic plot points throughout the story—but what I did not grasp was the underlying spirit of the show.
I tend to lean towards the belief that within each play, there is at least one, if not a few lines that can summarize the basic idea of the play.
In The Canadian Stage Company’s production of Rock’n’Roll, directed by Donna Feore, the cancer-ridden intellecturess Eleanor, played brilliantly by Fiona Reid, explains to her student:
“Eros is amachanon, he’s spirit as opposed to machinery, Sappho is making the distinction. He’s not naughty, he’s—what? Uncontrollable, Uncageable.”
Set during the democratic revolution of Soviet Russia, the revolutionary and uncageable spirit is what lies at the heart of this show. As a 22-year-old suburbanite, I failed to grasp at the meat and instead fiddled only with the skin when faced with just the text. But as the lights went down and Patrick Kwok-Choon sang the first few magical lines of Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair” as the illusory God Pan/Piper, I was immediately swept up and into Stoppard’s monolithic love song to an entire generation of believers—believers of ideas that manifested themselves into a world of action.
Shaun Smyth plays Jan, a rock’n’roll junkie whose political faith lies in the calloused, guitar string-flicking hands of the revolutionary rock group “The Plastic People of the Universe.” Referenced throughout the play, along with an entire soundtrack of American 60’s rock that introduces each successive scene, the music is a clear emotional, generational and theatrical anchor, which grounds the play within a specific context.
The play travels back and forth between Cambridge and Prague from 1968 till 1990. At a house in Cambridge, Max (played by Kenneth Welsh) and Eleanor Morrow live with their daughter Esme (Alex Paxton-Beeseley). In a small apartment in Prague, Jan lives with his vinyl records. Between these four, a variety of other characters surface and resurface, which include Lenka, Eleanor’s former student and Max’s future lover after Eleanor’s passing, and Ferdinand, Jan’s best friend and soft political advocate.
Reid shines as Eleanor in the first act. She remains the most interesting thing to watch on stage, especially during her sugary-sweet threat against an overly flirtatious Lenka and her gripping desperation for Max’s “grieving soul” when she passes. Reid also nails the older Esme (Paxton and Reid are double cast; Paxton later plays Alice, Esme’s future daughter), a former hippie who tries to keep her former vibrating energy contained, but fails always at the most comedic of times.
Smyth unfortunately seems to have trouble playing young Jan, as he comes off as an awkward but well-rehearsed series of movements and lines. His hair is distracting and he doesn't look like as if he is "grounded" within his body whatsoever. He does however redeem himself in the second act as an older Jan, losing the disheveled long hair and trading it in for a respectable jacket and shirt. I think the main problem was Smyth’s overzealous attempt to catch the sporadic vibrant energy of a rock’n’roll youth.
The set, designed by Michael Gianfrancesco is also worthy of note. The walls of both main sets are wallpapered images. The Cambridge house is divided neatly between an entire wall of green foliage on the right, and a series of floor to ceiling book-spines on the left. Jan’s apartment is covered in rows upon rows of vinyl record cases. These metaphorical designs speak volumes about the ideas that translate through the text and characters. In the opening of both acts one and two, Esme the hippie appears on her back, legs up on the seat of the patio chair, smoking amongst the foliage. Max the communist intellect on the other hand always enters from the left. There seems to be an ongoing debate between reason and passion, and this is echoed through Lenka towards the end of the play:
Lenka You think human nature is a beast which must be put in a cage. But it’s the cage that makes the animal bad.
…
Max The cage is reason.
In the end, this play is about something more than just music and politics. It’s about the conviction of beliefs and the passion that drives these characters to fight, to love, and to move on. This play is also a bold comment on the narcissism and apathy of my generation—as the general consensus from my peers was a non-committal post-show shrug. If only one day we can be spurred on enough to give a damn, we might be able to save ourselves from the imminent loss of our own human spirit.
