It’s only ‘Rock and Roll’
Stoppard play looks and sounds great, but story is lacking
REVIEW. Tom Stoppard’s “Rock and Roll” is about a lot of things, but rock music really isn’t one of them.
Sure, rock ’n’ roll as an agent of change is an underlying theme, but this story is so jam-packed with issues, you could easily get lost in the excessively wordy piece. (It clocks in at nearly three hours, intermission included.)
There’s Marxism, cancer, political upheaval, journalistic integrity, political oppression and lots of Czechoslovakian history. And a multitude of scene changes that are, fortunately, accompanied by snippets of rock music from the 20-plus years that pass as the story unfolds.
Jan (Manoel Felciano) is a grad student who forfeits the safety of academic life in England to fight for freedom in his homeland, a post-“Prague Spring,” Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.
Meanwhile, his mentor Max, an uber-Marxist professor, bides his time opining on communism and caring for his cancer-stricken wife Eleanor and their hippie daughter Esme while fending off romantic advances from Eleanor’s student, Sappho-scholar Lenka.
As time passes, one character dies, another becomes a mom, there’s a regime change and the multitude of plots culminate in a dinner party.
The good news is that, like all Huntington productions, “Rock and Roll” looks and sounds great. Douglas Schmidt’s set is a perfect blend of colorful academia and the bland, tattered gray one might experience living under an oppressive regime.
The production also boasts stellar, almost scene-stealing work by Summer Serafin and Rene Augesen, despite the harried pace at which the production moves. Augesen is especially outstanding as Eleanor, grappling with her own fate while hurling one of the most vile, offensive, stay-away-from-my-man lines in history with the panache and aplomb of a true aristocrat.
Unfortunately, brilliant delivery of the show’s best line isn’t enough to earn this show rock star status.
Sending your audience out to the street after an exuberant Rolling Stones-style curtain call does help, but in the end, “Rock and Roll” does little to “Start Me Up.”
‘Rock and Roll’
Through Dec. 11
Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston
Green line to Symphony
$20-$83, 617-266-0800
www.huntingtontheatre.org
