Cylla Von Tiedeman

Vinyl Destination | Shaun Smyth believes a good guitar solo can defeat Soviet oppression in Rock ’n’ Roll.

ROCK ’N’ ROLL
Directed by Donna Feore. Written by Tom Stoppard. Starring Shaun Smyth, Kenneth Welsh, Fiona Reid. Shoctor Theatre, The Citadel. To Nov 29 (7:30pm). Tickets available through the Citadel box office (425-1820/citadeltheatre.com).
***

The core argument Tom Stoppard puts forward in his 2006 play Rock ’n’ Roll is that communism is complicated — but then again, you probably didn’t need a play to tell you that. What you might like it to do, however, is help illuminate some of the issue’s finer points, recasting the opaque and convoluted in more human terms.

Donna Feore’s production, which is also the play’s Canadian première, does this most of the time. There are definitely broad swaths of truth to be found in this journey to the heart of the Left; more than that, they’re beautifully rendered and ably delivered, by Stoppard and a cadre of nimble-tongued actors, respectively. But there’s also a lot of other stuff filling the periphery that makes the play feel a lot bulkier and less convincing than it might have been.

If the title doesn’t tip you off to two of the piece’s three obsessions — Czech history and the failure of Soviet-style communism — at least it spells out, in no uncertain terms, the other one. Namely, the power of guitars to blow minds as well as speakers. Moving from 1968 to 1990, and back and forth between Prague and Cambridge, Rock ’n’ Roll presents music as a particularly effective form of protest within the Eastern Bloc. Heck, it might even beat passing around petitions and submitting open letters.

That’s the stance of Jan, anyway, a Czech grad student who returns home from England in 1968 to, in his words, “save socialism.” He dreams of a country where progressive rock groups like the Velvet Underground can coexist with a communist government, and while nobody else seems to share his vision, he looks for inspiration to a local psychedelic outfit called The Plastic People of the Universe, who have become de facto experts at aggravating the secret police.

Back in Cambridge, we spend time with Jan’s mentor Max, a fiery, card-carrying English communist who’s exactly as old as the October Revolution, his wife Eleanor, and their flower child daughter Esme. The latter introduces Jan to the play’s ultimate exemplar of the rock ’n’ roll underground: Syd Barrett, a musical visionary, drug hound, and founding member of Pink Floyd who was kicked out of the band for erratic behaviour shortly after their first album was released. He’s also a Cambridge resident — in fact, Esme claims to have been personally serenaded by Barrett in the opening scene.

Yes, music is everywhere: from its importance in the story, to the recurring symbol of the fragile vinyl record, to the ever-present soundtrack, complete with title and artist credits projected onto Michael Gianfrancesco’s jukebox-like set.

So why is it that so many of these musical flourishes make so little sense? It starts when Jan puts on The Doors’ Waiting for the Sun and a snippet of “Break on Through” blares out, even though it isn’t actually on that album, and continues right up to Stoppard’s heavyweight symbols in the script. On the one hand, we’re supposed to identify Barrett as this icon of pure, unspoiled idealism — just as communism, as written by Marx and not as practiced by Stalin, retains an abstract beauty. But then Act II leads up to Jan and Esme triumphantly attending a Rolling Stones concert following the Soviet collapse in 1990, and here the metaphor utterly falls apart. I mean, really: is there a single better example of a countercultural force becoming the new, fat establishment than Mick Jagger and co.?

What could be more, well, Soviet?

Then again, maybe that’s the point. The politics do come fast and furious, and it’s hard to keep up with the characters’ various arguments as they shift and re-settle over time — maybe they should just add some musical clarifications to the glossary included in the program.

On the whole, Stoppard’s dialogue snaps and zips in the right places, though there are a few scenes that seem overly pleased with their own genius. (After the fourth or so discussion about etymology in the work of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, you’ll know what I mean.) There’s also a weird contradiction in how these people can be so politically sharp and then spend hours babbling about Jerry Garcia’s heavenly guitar solos — but then, I haven’t figured out how that works in real life either.

The Citadel production is helped out by a solid trio of actors at its centre. As Max, Kenneth Welsh does the best job of anyone convincing us that he’s playing a real character, and not a walking soapbox. Shaun Smyth’s Jan, too, really does seem to age 20-plus years before our eyes. And Fiona Reid is equally impressive, performing double duty as Eleanor in Act I and a grown-up, burnt-out Esme
in Act II.

So Rock ’n’ Roll has a lot to puzzle over, and nearly as much to flat-out enjoy. Its flaws are mostly forgivable, given what you’ll take away from it. Like the Czech slogan of yore, I suppose what the play ultimately peddles in is socialism with a human face.