Czech this out: Rock 'n' Roll at the Goodman

Back in the mid-’90s, the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C., had a very cool cultural attaché by the name of Marcel Sauer who put on all sorts of interesting cultural events, many of which a young writer couldn't help but hype in the local Washington City Paper. Sauer even smuggled Czech honey wine (a seasonal delicacy) in on diplomatic flights for his cultural gatherings. This was the heyday of the Havel revolution when stoned-faced apparatchiks had been replaced by enthusiasts for surrealists film such as Sauer. The Czech art, fiction and music I was previewing was often bizarre, hilarious, densely psychedelic, sometimes even Dadaist. It really connected with me—they even offered me a job at the Embassy, which I might have taken had I known that I have a bit of Czech blood, but I didn't at the time. But the programming was never overtly political; it was arty—Tom Stoppard, the Czech-born playwright whose Rock 'n' Roll debuted Monday at the Goodman, would have approved. I thought of Sauer often during last night's opening-night performance and wondered what he would have made of it. TOC Theater editor Christopher Piatt gives us his take today.

Here's mine. Rock 'n' Roll is chewy (Stoppard breaks up his wordy, talky work with his trademark snappy Brit wit), chunky (in densely interwoven subject matter) and unusual in its resistance to easy answers or typical Western points of view. It might even appear a mess. The play tells the story of a Czech student whose soul is stirred by the rock music of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (literally a pagan god in one scene) and the underground progressive group the Plastic People of the Universe (my first complaint with the production: There's no actual Plastic People music in it, just well-worn if apropos classic rock blaring between scenes). Rock touches on the life cycle of political and social movements amid the saga of its thinkers and lovers intersecting around Cambridge University and the Prague Spring. It also comments on the hopes and delusions of the British communist party and the ’60s counter-cultural revolution, history's knack for distorting the past by romantization or evisceration and a dozen other stimulating topics. But right now, I think the bit that's sticking with me is Stoppard's take on the Dionysian, dangerous, individualistic quality of rock that in a contemporary context is so played-out as to appear quite banal. The play shows us how those clichés were once so primal, powerful, so magical that Communist governments shuddered in fear of the power of indifferent godless musicians. And young people in the West felt they were living in the presence of gods. If the mark of a great work of art is that you're still thrilled to be unpacking it hours or months later, Rock 'n' Roll certainly qualifies. It's a dense, reflecting work that I'm already planning to come back to again. After all, I'm a little bit Czech and a little bit rock ’n’ roll.