The core issue is that Tom Stoppard’s Rock’n’Roll is not just a play about a turbulent era—it’s a lens showing how ideas, art, and politics collide, and why clever, purposeful storytelling can illuminate those clashes more vividly than straight history ever could. But here’s where it gets controversial: what Stoppard chooses to foreground reveals a bold thesis about truth, power, and cultural resistance that invites fierce debate.
Brian Cox reflects on his long engagement with Stoppard’s work, beginning with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1967, a production that created a sensation in London. He recalls The Real Thing and Arcadia as landmark experiences that shaped his view of what great theatre can do. In Rock’n’Roll, staged at the Royal Court with Trevor Nunn directing and Rufus Sewell in the lead, Cox played Max, a Marxist academic, while the Czech student Jan returns to Prague amid the 1968 upheaval. The piece unfolds alongside another thread—the Sappho-centric drama embedded within the same evening—highlighting Stoppard’s knack for weaving seemingly disparate strands into a single, provocative statement.
The work centers on Stoppard’s belief system. It delves into the fate of the Plastic People of the Universe, a real Czech psychedelic band banned by a communist regime despite the band’s own non-political stance. Cox recalls his 1980s trip to Russia to work with Moscow Art Theatre School students, where a young actor named Ravil Isyanov—long remembered—defied Cold War stereotypes by embracing Western music with a passion that unsettled some peers who suspected him of disloyalty. Cox uses this anecdote to illustrate Stoppard’s broader point: culture and art can be subversive, even when not overtly political.
What set Stoppard apart, Cox notes, was his clarity and resolve. The playwright always knew his purpose, and his work resisted easy deviation. The Max character was inspired by the eminent Marxist thinker Eric Hobsbawm, yet for Stoppard, ideas took precedence over character. Cox recounts a moment of backstage candor: asking why his role, framed as a lecture on Syd Barrett, mattered when it was rooted in Hobsbawm’s intellectual profile. Stoppard’s answer—“Because you are”—condensed the author’s method to a single, inexorable truth, leaving little room for dispute.
The production’s premiere was memorable for its star power and audience chemistry. Václav Havel, the former Czechoslovak president, historian Timothy Garton Ash, and Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour were in attendance, while Cox recalls catching a glimpse through the curtain of Mick Jagger supported by his partner—moments that underscored theatre’s reach into wider cultural conversations. The play resonated with critics and captivated New York audiences as well, a testament to Stoppard’s instinct for what audiences crave without capitulating to concession.
Cox emphasizes that although Stoppard was born in what had been Czechoslovakia, he carried a distinctly English sensibility—polite, precise, almost aristocratic in bearing. The shared memory of the Royal Court production is tinged with warmth and humor. Nicole Ansari, Cox’s wife, played Lenka, a Czech student, adding another dimension to the ensemble. A humorous anecdote from their routine pre-show parking illustrates Stoppard’s belief in elegance and timing: when he sat in his car waiting for the metering to strike 12, his rationale was simple yet profound—“a matter of elegance.”
Ultimately, Cox highlights Stoppard as a man who valued the right moment and the right idea, a combination that makes his plays durable and provocative. He remained astonished by Stoppard’s ability to push audiences to the edge of argument and then gently guide them toward a clearer understanding of the core questions at stake.
