Rock 'n' Roll (play)

2006 play by Tom Stoppard

Rock 'n' Roll is a play by British playwright Tom Stoppard that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2006.

The play is concerned with the significance of rock and roll in the emergence of the socialist movement in Eastern Bloc Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Taking place in Cambridge, England and in Prague, the play contrasts the attitudes of a young Czech PhD student and rock music fan, who becomes appalled by the repressive regime in his home country, with those of his British Marxist professor, who unrepentantly continues to believe in the Soviet ideal. The play takes place over several decades, from the late 1960s until 1990, ending with a concert given by the Rolling Stones that year in Prague. Recurrent references are made to a glimpse by one of the main characters of the young Syd Barrett performing Golden Hair. Barrett's physical and mental decline also plays a role in the drama (Barrett in fact died during the play's run). The underground Czech group the Plastic People of the Universe are held up by another character as an ideal of resistance to Communism. The poetry of Sappho is another recurrent motif; its pagan sensualism is implicitly compared with the anarchic erotic force of rock music. One of the characters, a Czech writer, is named Ferdinand as an homage to Václav Havel. Havel wrote three plays with a protagonist named Ferdinand Vaněk, a stand in for Havel himself. These plays were distributed by samizdat and became a symbol of the resistance. A number of Havel's friends then wrote their own Vaněk plays, with Ferdinand Vaněk as a character. Stoppard continues in that tradition. This play is one of several works in Stoppard's oeuvre concerned with artistic dissent against the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia: Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth also addresses this, as do Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Professional Foul.

The play premiered in Prague's historic National Theatre (Národní Divadlo) in February 2007. It features opening and closing performances by The Plastic People of the Universe.

A Broadway (New York City) run of the play commenced in previews on 19 October 2007 and opened on 4 November 2007 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. Several of the original cast members – including Sewell, Cox and Cusack — appeared in the production that is directed by Trevor Nunn. The production had a strictly limited run and closed on 9 March 2008.