theater
BY RICK LEVIN
Kyle Leibovitch (left)
and Dylan Gutridge
in Rock N Roll
All Tomorrow’s Parties
UO’s Rock N Roll channels Czech Velvet Revolution
“I
’m down to one belief,”
huffs Max, the stubbornly
unsentimental hard-line Marxist
in Tom Stoppard’s Rock N Roll, currently
at the Hope Theatre under the direction of
UO theater veteran Joseph Gilg. “Between
theory and practice there’s a decent
fi t,” Max goes on. “We just have to be
better.” Being better, being right, wrong,
confused, surveilled, enraged, engaged,
imprisoned, impassioned — following the
arc of Czechoslovakia’s political turmoil
from the “Prague Spring” renaissance in
1968 to Vaclav Havel’s peaceful “Velvet
Revolution” against the communist regime,
Stoppard’s play goes to great lengths to
make the political personal, and vice versa.
It’s a delicate balancing act. Stoppard, with
his fi ne grasp of Eastern Bloc politics and a
subtle touch for displaying the depths and
complexities of character, is able to create
a drama that is both politically charged and
emotionally moving, without falling into
bombast on one side or bathos on the other.
University Theatre’s production keeps
pace with the rapid clip of events Rock
N Roll depicts, and it handles the play’s
diffi cult subtleties with uncommon charm
and spunk. As the story jumps forward in
time, ticking off the years, it also moves
back and forth between Cambridge and
Prague. This shutter-click technique
presents the audience with short but
powerful domestic scenes loaded with the
colliding tensions of individualism versus
ideology. The tectonic shift of Czech
society during these years is personifi ed
in the play’s two main characters: Max
(Russell Dyball), the browbeating
Cambridge ideologue who refuses to admit
the youthful cultural revolution taking
place before his eyes, and the younger Jan
(Dylan Gutridge), a visiting Czech student
obsessed with the artistic and personal
freedoms represented by bands like the
Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground
and Pink Floyd (the production, by the
way, is full of great music).
“It’s not the music, man; it’s the
oxygen,” Jan says at one point, providing
the antithesis to Max’s hard-core
materialist harangues about the primacy
of socialism over the lone individual.
Stoppard is adept at capturing the struggle
between realpolitik and Marxism, between
lofty theory and gritty practice, and the
way these battles play out with messy
ambivalence and hurt feelings in the day-
to-day lives of thinking, feeling people.
Director Gilg and his cast do a superb
job of giving the play — which in the wrong
hands could be annoying and tendentious
— a real, live beating heart, pumping with
spirit and courage. Both Gutridge and
Dyball are excellent, as are Emilie Martz
(in the dual roles of Eleanor/Esme, Max’s
University
Theatre’s
production keeps
pace with the
rapid clip of
events
Rock N Roll
depicts, and it
handles
the play’s diffi cult
subtleties with
uncommon charm
and spunk.
wife and daughter, respectively), Maggie
May Stabile as Lenka, and Kyle Leibovitch
as Jan’s politicized friend Ferdinand.
In fact, there is scarcely a misstep in
University Theatre’s sharp adaptation of
Rock N Roll. George Orwell argued that all
art is propaganda, but there are yet those
works (like 1984, for instance) that make
that extra reach into the realm of political
fable — often at the expense of artistic
grace and subtlety. This certainly isn’t the
case with Rock N Roll, which anchors its
momentous politics in the loves and losses
of a small clutch of tight-knit characters.
And this entertaining and intelligent
production shows a genuine understanding
of the Velvet Revolution, with its human
foibles and triumphs on scales at once
small and enormous.
ew
Rock N Roll plays 8 pm Thursday through Saturday, Jan. 29 &
Feb. 4-5, with a matinee 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 30, at the UO’s Hope
Theatre. $7-$14; tickets at www.tickets.oregon.edu or 346-4363.
Lord Leebrick Theatre Company Presents
Cottage Theatre presents
“He’s no ordinary woman!”
A farce by Brandon Thomas, Directed by Alan Beck
February 4, 5, 6* ● 11, 12, 13* ● 18, 19, 20*
*matinee
$16 Adult, $14 Senior/Student
7 Village Dr
700
Drive • Cottage Grove • www.cottagetheatre.org • 541-942-8001
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
a new comedy by
Annie Baker
LAST WEEKEND...Don’t miss it!
Tickets: 541-465-1506
www.lordleebrick.com
Sponsored by :
EUGENE WEEKLY JANUARY 27, 2011 27