Rock ‘n’ Roll

Published Monday 19 June 2006 at 15:35 by Gerald Berkowitz

Tom Stoppard’s characteristically witty, intellectually impressive and dramatically multi-layered new play posits the hypothesis that the fall of Communism, particularly in Czechoslovakia, was not driven by political or economic forces. According to Stoppard it was due to a seismic shift in spirit and consciousness, making it the ultimate triumph of the 1960s peace-and-love, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll ethos.

Stoppard makes his case on several narrative and metaphorical levels simultaneously, from the encounters and debates over more than two decades between a British Communist and a Czech music fan, through the iconic figure of Syd Barrett, a burnt-out ex-rocker whose music and spirit remained influential even as he drifted into obscurity.

Other demonstrations of his thesis include the account of an underground Czech rock band that was an ongoing irritation to the authorities precisely because the musicians were nonpolitical and not open to the usual methods of coercion or repression and the more metaphoric figure of a cancer victim who insists to the end that her spirit and selfhood cannot be ravaged as her body is.

Almost inevitably, such an ambitious work occasionally sprawls and loses its focus, but Stoppard’s clear vision and Trevor Nunn’s strong directorial hand always bring it back to the central argument. There are solid and engaging performances all around, particularly from Brian Cox’s doctrinaire Communist whose soul is warmer than his intellect would admit. Rufus Sewell is the rock fan with more political awareness than he pretends and from Sinead Cusack as both the unbreakable cancer victim and 20 years later, her ex-flower-child daughter.