Couple thoughts on Rock 'n' Roll

I know Rock 'n' Roll is supposed to be, like, the crowning achievement of Tom Stoppard or something, but I gotta come out and say it: I was kinda bored. I don't think I was missing a major piece of the puzzle - I just felt ambivalent about a lot of what was happening up there. Okay, ambivalent about the first act, less so about the second act. I saw the show on it's first night back from the stagehands strike, so it might have been a little off or something, but I just didn't click with it the way that it seems like everybody else does.

My first complaint: I'm going to seem extremely dense saying this, but it sort of seemed like the use of the actual Rock 'n' Roll (between the scenes, not within the plot) played like an old dude's nostalgic mix CD. I know Pink Floyd, I love Pink Floyd, I get it. What's your point? I mean, I get the point - it's legendary, ground breaking, incredible, revolutionary. Yes, of course it was. But, what's your point?

And even though the performances were really, really great (especially Rufus Sewell, fucking incredible performance that made me miss British acting terribly), I didn't see any reason to care about the trademark Stoppardian philosophical debates of the play. With Coast of Utopia, the characters were so invested in the philosophies they were discussing - their lives and their country hinged on it, they were practically on fire with the passion they had for the subject. I mean that's why Billy Crudup won his Tony, right? Rock 'n' Roll, on the other hand, spends a lot of time with an aging professor who still believes in communism after everybody else moves on, and another man whose soul lives in music more than politics. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But it's just not very interesting to me to watch those kind of characters go through multiple looong conversations about politics and philosophy. Especially when I feel like I just got 9 hours of similar debates better-achieved in Coast of Utopia. Move on!

The rest of the play, all the stuff about family, love, trust, all of that I loved. In fact, the second act was way more engaging than the first because of how much more it focuses on those themes. Why do we need an hour and a half of philosophy to justify focusing in on matters of the heart? I can't help feeling that in Rock 'n' Roll, the long philosophical debates are nothing than the crutch that Stoppard just can't abandon.