About this title: "Rock 'n' Roll" is an electrifying collision of the romantic and the revolutionary. It is 1968 and the world is ablaze with rebellion, accompanied by a sound track of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Clutching his prized collection of rock albums, Jan, a Cambridge graduate student, returns to his homeland of Czechoslovakia just as Soviet tanks ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780802143075ISBN:0802143075
Description: New. Brand new, crisp and unread! Just a bit of ever so slight shelf wear! May have publishers remainder mark on the edge just to assure it is not returned to the store. Product Description: Rock 'n' Roll is an electrifying collision of the romantic and the revolutionary. It is 1968 and the world is ablaze with rebellion, accompanied by a sound track of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Clutching his prized collection of rock albums, Jan, a Cambridge graduate student, returns to his homeland ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780802143075ISBN:0802143075
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Grove Pr
Date Published: 2007-05-10
ISBN-13:9780802143075ISBN:0802143075
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780802143075. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780571232703ISBN:0571232701
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: GROVE/ATLANTIC INC
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780802143075ISBN:0802143075
Description: New. Called an "extraordinary, epic drama of politics, persecution, and protest" (Nicholas de Jongh, The Evening Standard), Tom Stoppard's Rock 'N' Roll is an electrifying collision of the romantic and the revolutionary. It is 1968 and the world is ablaze... read more
"Some Stoppard plays I need to see rather than just read to truly get. This is one of them. :) I'm pretty sure I would quite enjoy a production of it, but right now I really don't feel like it clicked for me."
"This should have been terrific, with its focus on the resistance of the dissidents in communist Czechoslovakia and the role of rock 'n' roll in the youth rebellion of the 60s and 70s. It's witty and smart, and Stoppard's clearly passionate about the subject (his own family were refugees from C.), but it ends up feeling awfully didactic. I found it hard to sympathize with Max, a British academic/armchair communist, and found the human relationships oddly bloodless. But it was fun looking up clips of The Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd on YouTube."
"A perfect marriage of the personal and the political occur in Stoppard's insightful, smaller work from 2006. Concerned as most of his work is with the ideological--as it loses verve under oppression or repression of the human spirit--his characters here leap from the page (for the most part; per usual, his side characters sometimes suffer at the hand of adding interesting vocal rhythms to the piece).
The lives of British Communist Max and his pupil Jan intersect across the years of the aging Communist regime in the 1980s. At the play's start, Jan leaves the UK for Prague, where he intends to save socialism. As the noose begins to tighten around personal freedoms there, he clings to his beloved record collection, where he finds that personal choice and expression still exist. His association with The Plastic People of the Universe, one of many rebellious Czech rock bands, gives him hope for a better future. Meanwhile, Max sits at home, a dinosaur politico from another age who can't handle the coming death of his fiery wife; unbeknown to most of the family, his youngest daughter pines for the far away Jan.
Ultimately, like many of Stoppard's play, Rock'n'Roll is a love story. Maybe a much purer love story than the one depicted in his trilogy The Coast of Utopia, as it concerns more present matters and a brighter, more involved set of lovers. Big ideas are buoyed by the personalities depicted here, but those big ideas rest on the laurels of feeling loved, or knowing what it is to reach someone. Music does that, as Stoppard clearly states here, and so does revolution--in any form."
"Sometimes Stoppard tries too hard and gets lost in the many ideas that swirl around in that brilliant mind of his. The concept for this play was intersting, but the execution could have been better."
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