`Rock 'n' Roll' delivers tension, tenderness
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/story/1232539.html
Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, an intellectually challenging yet
undeniably engrossing play, opens at Mosaic Theatre in Plantation.
09.14.09
By CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com
Rock and rebellion go hand-in-hand, whether it's a kid blasting music
his parents hate or a band doing its own thing its own way, no matter the cost.
The latter is the case in Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, an
intellectually challenging yet undeniably engrossing season opener at
Mosaic Theatre in Plantation.
The Czech band Plastic People of the Universe plays a meaningful
offstage role in Stoppard's 2006 play. Historic events like the
Prague Spring of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989 do too. But
what makes Rock 'n' Roll (really all of Stoppard's work) so
compelling is the people he places into the worlds he fashions. Rock
'n' Roll is a play roiling with tensions. It is also graced with
piercing moments of tenderness and sorrow, when a blizzard of words
and references gives way to pure emotion.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
If you're not up on Czech history, the protest document dubbed
Charter 77, the poetry of Sappho or the fractured relationship of
Roger ``Syd'' Barrett and Pink Floyd, you'd do well to arrive at
Mosaic early to study the program insert -- context helps. But
Stoppard, director Richard Jay Simon, a sublime cast and design team
tell a compelling story, one full of wit, insight and theatricality.
The playwright leads off with a scene of rebellion, one of many in
Rock 'n' Roll. Max (Gordon McConnell), a fervent Communist who
teaches at Cambridge, is bidding a fiery farewell to his student Jan
(Antonio Amadeo), a Ph.D. candidate who has decided to return to
Prague after the Soviets put an end to attempted government reforms.
Max is as furious as any domineering father figure whose ``son''
appears to be turning his back on everything the old man believes.
PASSAGE OF TIME
The action shifts back and forth, from Cambridge to Prague, as a
changing array of clothes and hairstyles helps chart the passage of
time. Though sustained by the music he loves, Jan finds life
increasingly perilous, as he slips from working journalist to
political prisoner.
Max grapples with the losing cancer battle being fought by his wife
Eleanor (Laura Turnbull), a scholar who teaches the poetry of Sappho.
Their rebellious daughter Esme (Dana Colagiovanni) is a rock-loving
flower child who becomes a teen mum. As is so often the case, life
doesn't begin to play out the way Max is certain it should.
As challenging as Rock 'n' Roll is for the audience, doing the play
justice is a test for any theater, particularly a modest-sized one
like Mosaic. With a few caveats (some actors barely project, for
example), Simon and company have done an excellent job of bringing
Stoppard's work to life.
Matt Corey's stop-on-a-dime rock sound design is brilliant. Set
designer Sean McClelland supplies both Max's Communist
academic-at-home habitat and Jan's graffiti-splashed flat. K. Blair
Brown's costumes and wigs are transformative, turning Turnbull from
Eleanor in Act One to grown-up Esme in Act Two. Turnbull and Amadeo,
two of the region's finest actors, turn in wonderfully detailed,
moving performances. McConnell is still fighting for the laser
precision Stoppard's dialogue demands, but his Max is there
emotionally. Scott Genn, in a variety of roles, and David Sirois
stand out among supporting players. Stoppard's plays are too rare in
South Florida. They demand much from artists and audiences, but done
well, they deliver much too. Mosaic is delivering a potent Rock 'n' Roll.
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Ambitious Mosaic Theatre recreates challenging Tom Stoppard play
http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/arts/story/1226123.html
09.11.09
By CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com
Tom Stoppard's smart, provocative plays are magnets for audiences who
crave theater that sparks both thought and emotion -- and for artists
who relish the bottomless challenge of bringing the playwright's rich
worlds to life.
When the Czech-born British writer's plays cross the Atlantic, they
become must-see, much-honored theater in New York and at major
companies around the United States. Those works include the nine-hour
Coast of Utopia trilogy (about Russian intellectuals and the roots of
radical politics), Jumpers, Travesties, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead, The Real Thing, The Invention of Love and Arcadia.
Yet those meaty plays are rarely produced by South Florida's
professional theaters, doubtless for reasons ranging from cast size
to the plays' intellectual heft. Stoppard's work has been neglected
here since GableStage revived The Real Thing at the start of 2001.
That drought ends this weekend as Plantation's Mosaic Theatre kicks
off its season with the playwright's most recent Broadway hit, Rock 'n' Roll.
Rehearsals for the play, which travels from Cambridge to Prague
between 1968 and 1990, have been a frenzy of hard work, intellectual
investigation, moments of illumination and occasional bouts of fear.
``I'm not smart enough for this,'' jokes Antonio Amadeo, who plays
Stoppard's sort-of-alter ego Jan in Rock 'n' Roll. ``But this was
written by someone who knows what he's doing. It's a joy to go home
with my brain oozing out of my ears.''
A VAST CANVAS
Rock 'n' Roll is, in fact, daunting for everyone involved. Parts of
its vast canvas include the Prague spring of 1968, when the Soviet
Union brought a brutal end to the attempted reforms of Czech leader
Alexander Dubcek; the Velvet Revolution of 1989, with the nonviolent
overthrow of Gustáv Husák's repressive government and election of
playwright/dissident Václav Havel as president; the Czech band
Plastic People of the Universe; the music of Pink Floyd and founding
member Roger ``Syd'' Barrett; Marxism; the poet Sappho -- well,
there's more, much more.
Mosaic's artistic director, Richard Jay Simon, knew that Rock 'n'
Roll would be a challenge for him, his cast, his designers and his
audience. At first, he was put off by the size of the cast: Though
the script's 19 roles can be played by a dozen actors, that's still a
large and expensive company.
But having worked hard since he founded Mosaic in 2001 to build it
into the kind of theater that won six Carbonell Awards in April, and
having fallen in love with the play, Simon felt ready for a challenge
that would make his brain tingle.
``I don't remember a project where I had to cram so much into my
brain,'' he says. ``Communism, Sappho, mythology, politics, all of
the political figures in Czechoslovakia -- I hardly knew anything.
You worry whether the audience will get it, even if you have a guide
in the program. But if we tell the story and make the relationships
compelling, then it's OK. His plays are a little bit dense, but
they're meant to be seen, not read. . . . The storytelling is
incredibly rich.''
Anchoring the cast are three Carbonell Award-winning actors: Gordon
McConnell, Laura Turnbull and Amadeo. Simon says he chose them
because he knew -- beyond their obvious talent -- the discipline,
thirst for research and depth of understanding they could bring to
their roles and to the play itself.
McConnell plays Max, a prickly British professor and unrepentant
Communist who's angry that his protegé Jan has decided to return to
Prague to fight for reform.
In the first act, Turnbull plays Max's wife Eleanor, a classical
scholar who's dying of cancer; in the second, she's their daughter
Esme, an ex-hippie who once fancied Jan.
WHAT IF?
Amadeo sees the music-loving Jan as the celebrated Stoppard ``in an
alternate universe, asking what if he had gone back to
Czechoslovakia.'' (He didn't, though he became a translator of Havel's work.)
None of the actors has ever done a Stoppard play. Turnbull has done
research about Eleanor's academic field, focusing on people she knows
who have fought cancer and refused to give up, developing a different
personality and voice for Esme. It is, she says, ``very exciting. I'm
happy to come to rehearsal.''
McConnell has used a bit of family history -- his uncle Kenneth
McLachlan was a passionate Scottish communist -- to find his way into Max.
``He's a hard-line ideological communist who has no idea that the
practical application of this great idea is not working,'' says the
actor, who likens Max's personality to the prickly lead character on
TV's House.
And all those references, all that history?
``The bottom line is characterization,'' says McConnell. ``We all
have our characters solid. The history is an overlay.''
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