Silly Little Country

Stoppard's "Rock and Roll" at Canadian Stage

From the moment Canadian Stage announced they would produce Stoppard's Rock and Roll I have been looking forward to this, but some difficulties scheduling it with SillyWife meant we watched on the matinee of its last day.
I have long been a Stoppard fan, and thought this would be very interesting, as I expected a sort of mapping to rock and roll as an influence in the downfall of communism.
But it was not that at all.
What it struck me as, and brilliantly, is a play by a great playwright, pushing 70, mostly about what I hear now described as 'Life Course' (I first heard about this as what might be considered a euphemism at University of Toronto lectures in what used to be the geriatrics group). I may think that because I am in the seventh decade, but SillyWife, roughly a decade behind me, loved it too.
The play covers about 22 years between 1968 and 1990. In that time a beloved wife dies, the widower takes up with one of her students, gives up on that. His hippieish daughter meets a somewhat twitty journalist, has a daughter, separates, and comes back to care for Dad. A Czech philosophy Grad student at Cambridge in 1968, where all these people are located, returns to Prague after the Russian invasion in 1968. He and his friends undergo numerous violations from the Commies in the course of the 22 years, with all the various political positions moving around (around the definition of what real dissent means). They trade girlfriends and suffer various misfortunes, and have occasional connections to the professor back in Cambridge.
And there is an ongoing connection to rock music, which is integrated, I suspect more brilliantly than I recognized (I did see a lot of wonderful connections between what the characters said and what was in the songs, but I imagine a grad student with the script would embarrass me).
At the end, after the Velvet Revolution, there is a lovely reunion of characters in Cambridge, and then in Prague, and this is a great piece of writing, as Stoppard keeps the surprises, and delights, coming.
There is much interesting political discussion and Stoppard frames it well. In fact, I think his 'Travesties' was what caused me to realize how godawful Lenin was, but now he is older and presents things in a more nuanced manner.
I think the intertwining of English and Czech themes is a really good idea for this period, as the Prague story is in the end so attractive, though he can show at what cost. I went out of my way a couple of years ago to spend a few days in Prague and the official city tours quite rightly emphasize key and awful and great events from 1968 and 1989.
But this was no crass political game - Stoppard presents a complex lovely story about three generations who lived around those 20-odd years, and there is NO character I could not like. That is the sort of play I like, even when I find all of them somewhat alien. That is playwriting.
And then there is putting the play on to maintain that. And this was done, In fact as I look at the original cast in London, I still think that Kenneth Welsh, Shaun Smyth, and Fiona Reid in the main roles beat that casting. Toronto is an impressive theatrical city. And the supporting roles were all superb.
I need to toss in a bit about Fiona Reid. Is there any age in her life where she could not play someone of some other crazily different age? Not that I know. She did it at the start of her career and she is great at it now.
I expected a play mostly dominated by political interest but as the play closed, and I was wiping off tears, they were not primarily about the politics, they were about the life courses, and how it was going for people who had fought hard to make good lives, and how hard that could be.
Thanks Tom Stoppard!
A couple of small points. I never bothered with Pink Floyd, and he makes a case for them to me. I love his use of Syd Barrett (and of Alice's side in wanting to protect him) as a substitute for the Dionysian, well, and of Sappho .
Also, I must say, as a total new fan of Glee, I am glad to see that their excellent form was anticipated by Stoppard (and Cabaret and the whole history of the American musical) - he does a great job of making the rock and roll interventions relevant to the current plot.
I regret only that these comments are available only in the last performance of the show, so I am not selling more tickets for the company.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 8:45 PM