By Venus Zarris
Amidst the academic and cerebral acrobatics of Tom Stoppard’s thrilling new play, there is something electric, something visceral, something ROCK N’ ROLL. Perhaps because this play seems more to be talking bout his generation than previous work, Stoppard connects on a stronger emotional level than ever before.
Although previous offerings have been a banquet for the intellect, they have often proved to be a bit dry, dethatched and/or elitist. But ROCK ‘N’ ROLL balances the mechanics of an exciting political polemic and a philosophical debate with a more human and immediate connection. The result is nothing short of wonderful.
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL is still a Poindexter’s wet dream. The dissection of Sapphic poetic paradigms, for example, is cerebrally orgasmic and dramatically delightful. Stoppard is, once again, operating so far below the surface that he runs the risk of busting through to the core of the planet, so far over the heads of most playwriting that he bypassed nosebleeds years ago and is blasting past the astral body formerly known as Pluto.
And yet he can mix the base up with the best of them, such as lines like, “Don’t try to shag my husband until after I’m dead or I’ll stick The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance up your rancid cunt.” He has a black belt in the art of one-liners, be they erudite or lowbrow.
Who better to take us on this smarty-pants ride than Mr. Smarty-pants Director himself, Charles Newell? Few can traverse Shakespeare, Beckett, Chekhov, Albee and Stoppard to such beguiling effect. Newell captures every nuance, epiphany, laugh and kick in the gut with a driving beat.
Rock and Roll music has always played a subversive part in politics and in Stoppard’s complex story, we see its impact behind the iron curtain. ROCK ‘N’ ROLL intersects the lines between ideal and applied, be that with music that subversively gives voice to the masses and then sells its soul to success, or politics that promises a utopian balancing of the scales and then delivers crushing suppression. In the midst of this introspective marathon there is the concrete reality of human interaction.
Every aspect of this production serves to create a perfect rendering of the script but it is the ensemble that makes ROCK ‘N’ ROLL transcend the discourse. The conviction of the cast is clear. The physicality of the character’s chemistry is beautiful. Cast to perfection there are stand out moments for all but in what will go down as one of the years best performances, if not the best you’ll ever see, Mary Beth Fisher delivers something ferociously staggering and delicately transfixing.
As Eleanor, she creates the experience of battling cancer with a vocabulary that peels away the conventional coping mechanisms of denial and avoidance, replacing it instead with dead on pragmatically tragic honesty and startling self-awareness. Few writers can successfully tap into this brutally cognizant state-of-mind and even fewer actors can deliver it with sincerity, strength, hunor and emotional candor.
Fisher brilliantly accomplishes this to bone chilling effect.
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL is a dramatically loud, lucid, lavish, lovely and lingering triumph and one of the best offerings the Goodman has produced in some time. DO NOT MISS this completely absorbing and electrifying triumph.
4 STARS
(“ROCK ‘N’ ROLL” runs through June 7 at The Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. 312-443-3800.)
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ROCK ‘N’ ROLL production photos by Michael Brosilow
Goodman Theatre image by Venus Zarris
