Stoppard's `Rock 'N' Roll' Lands in NY

NEW YORK — The intoxicating spirit of freedom — political, cultural and social — flows throughout "Rock 'n' Roll," Tom Stoppard's surprisingly heartfelt drama set against the backdrop of more than two decades of turbulent Czech history.

This humane play, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, celebrates revolution in all its aspects as well as the men and women who embrace or are challenged by it. A London hit, "Rock 'n' Roll" has arrived in New York with some members of its original British cast, including the production's three stars, Rufus Sewell, Brian Cox and Sinead Cusack.

It's splendid, illuminating entertainment, chock full of ideas and high-flying arguments (could there be a Stoppard play without them?) yet resonating with an emotion that springs from several fully developed characters.

The amazing Sewell, not seen on Broadway since the 1995 production of Brian Friel's "Translations," anchors the richly embroidered story. He portrays Jan, a young Czech lecturer at Cambridge University in England. The time is 1968 and change is in the air — politically and musically as rock (in all its forms) begins to experiment and explode.

Jan finds the new music exhilarating. Yet, packing up his beloved albums, he returns home as members of the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, invade Czechoslovakia after its leaders try to loosen communism's grasp.

At first, Jan appears indifferent to the political situation, but he gradually gets involved, particularly after his albums are smashed and members of a local band, the real-life Plastic People of the Universe, are arrested.

In contrast, Jan's mentor in Cambridge, an unrepentant English Marxist named Max, remains resolute in his support of communism. Cox plays him as a magnificent bellower, outraged as many of his fellow communists abandon their principles. Never, he says, with all-consuming fury.

Cusack, too, is extraordinary, tackling two roles — Max's cancer-riddled wife, who lashes out at her seemingly preoccupied husband in the play's most explosive scene. In the evening's second half, she portrays their daughter, Esme, a one-time flower-child who has grown up to become an unhappy, unfulfilled woman.

Music punctuates the passage of time — bits of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, among others, as well as the Plastic People of the Universe.

Yet one musical figure, Syd Barrett, a one-time member of Pink Floyd, hovers most prominently over "Rock 'n' Roll," as if he were a sensuous rock version of Pan. Barrett, who died in 2006, lived in Cambridge, and this almost mythic, haunted creature has a profound effect on Esme and later, her daughter, played by the lovely Alice Eve.

The tale unfolds in a series of short scenes and director Trevor Nunn, aided by designer Robert Jones' highly mobile sets, keeps them moving with remarkable fluidity. Not even those high-tone academic discussions — ruminations on translations of Sapphic poetry, for example — are able to slow things down.

The characters age just as quickly and with astonishing realism, particularly Sewell's Jan. The actor flawlessly captures the man's journey from young idealist to weary, apparently beaten middle-aged man. Yet throughout, Jan retains a generosity to others that is enormously appealing.

Freedom eventually does triumph in Czechoslovakia, but Stoppard, who was born there but left while still a child, has more on his mind than Eastern Europe. In a sterling second-act dinner-party, his characters dissect an England that seems to have lost its way, a country that, according to one of them, "has lost its nerve."

Disillusionment with politics and England may have set in, but in the play's final scene, there is an exuberant moment at a Rolling Stones concert in Prague in 1990. After all, Stoppard seems to be saying, even if life disappoints, there always will be "Rock 'n' Roll."

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