ROCK 'N' ROLL. To 14 March.
Manchester.
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
by Tom Stoppard.
Library Theatre To 14 March 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm.
Audio-described 11 March, 14 March 2.30pm.
BSL Signed 26 Feb 7.30pm.
Captioned 6 March.
Runs 2hr 50min One interval.
TICKETS: 0161 236 7110.
www.librarytheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 February.
A Rock ‘n’ Roll that reaches the play’s soul.
Music is the fuel of two Tom Stoppard plots, his shortest ‘full-length’ piece Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and one of his longest, 2006’s Rock ‘n’ Roll. Both examine oppressive Communist regimes, but whereas EFBDF’s music is hardly significant, the tracks interleaving this story of political belief in the 22 years from the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia are carefully chosen.
It’s a play where ideas determine character, in an almost-Marxist pattern: the limits of materialism, rock music as political opposition, in its content or simply because it ignores officially-approved norms. Chris Honer’s Manchester production shows the episodic play at its best. Technical limitations and lack of overblown detail encourage clarity and focus on the issues, given a sense of depth by fine playing in the central roles.
Hilton McRae (one-time member of Socialist theatre company 7:84) brings a blazing, increasingly angry conviction to Max, born in the year of the Soviet Revolution and maintaining his belief in it, despite its failings and his own faltering physical health. But his confidence shows its limitations; along with his materialism it suggests someone in whom certainty prevents any mental adjustment.
And Max is an Academic, secure in a Cambridge career. Unlike his one-time Czech student Jan, he doesn’t have to live under a spitefully repressive regime. Graeme Hawley’s Jan is an impressive performance, maintaining the contained quality of someone being polite in a foreign land and watching his step in his own home police state.
The doubling of Max’s wife and daughter at different ages by two women actors is a semi-convincing device suggesting the play’s male-conceived world, matching the male pop world of the featured groups, anarchic Czech Plastic People of the Universe and Pink Floyd, plus their one-time member Syd Barrett, golden youth of the rock sixties (who died the year the play premiered).
Yet Cate Hamer’s superbly acted Eleanor gives a blazing conviction to her character’s humanistic belief, fostered by the classical poetry she teaches, that there’s more to her identity than her tumour-ridden body. And her Esme finds a smiling acceptance of Jan that undercuts all Max’s bitterness.
The Piper/Policeman/Stephen: Nicholas Osmond.
Esme/Alice: Emily Taaffe.
Jan: Graeme Hawley.
Max: Hilton McRae.
Eleanor/Esme: Cate Hamer.
Gillian/Magda: Ruth Westley.
Interrogator/Nigel: Christopher Wright.
Ferdinand: Ken Bradshaw.
Milan/Waiter: David Crellin.
Lenka: Leila Crerar.
Candida/Pupil: Annie Fitzmaurice.
Director: Chris Honer.
Designer: Judith Croft.
Lighting: Nick Richings.
Sound: Paul Gregory.
Video: Matt Spencer.
Assistant director: Christos Chanios.
2009-02-22 23:36:17