Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia. The first time he wrote about his birthplace was in 1977 in a television play called Foul Play, a witty political comedy long overdue for revival.
The second time was in 2006. Rock ‘N’ Roll, like Foul Play, is dedicated to Vaclav Havel, the former President of the New Czech Republic. The play means a lot to Stoppard and it is now revived in a production by Nina Raine on a traverse stage. Scene changes are punctuated by rock ‘n’ roll music. Stoppard loves rock ‘n’ roll.
The action is set mainly in Prague during a period which stretches from the Soviet invasion in 1968 to the Velvet Revolution in 1990 and traces the impact a rock group, The Plastic People of the Universe, had on events. Their music, dismissed by the regime as “socially negative”, became a symbolism of resistance.
The irony was that the Plastics didn’t care about politics. They just wanted to be left alone and allowed to wear their hair long. The regime knew how to deal with dissidents, but found it much harder to deal with the band’s indifference.
The main character is Jan (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), an academic, the sort of man Stoppard might have been if he had stayed in Czechoslovakia. Jan pretends to be a good communist. He is sent to Cambridge to spy on his mentor (Nathaniel Parker), a die-hard communist, who is angered by people’s political apathy and inertia.
Jan argues that the only true resistance to oppression is indifference. His passion is for rock ‘n’ roll, rather than socialism, and when his prized record collection is smashed by the Czech police, he becomes a dissident and is sent to prison.
Jan would love to be English. ‘I would,’ he wittily says, ‘be moderately enthusiastic and moderately philistine, and a good sport. I would be kind to foreigners in a moderately superior way, and also to animals, except for the ones I kill and I would live a decent life, like most English people and behave decently in the English way.’
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd is charismatic but Stoppard doesn’t make it easy for the audience and the play and the production never quite work.
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