Last Sunday, I went to see a Brazilian production of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’. My knowledge of Stoppard only extends as far as watching ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (which he wrote the screenplay for) and knowing about ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’, a play about two minor characters from ‘Hamlet’ who take centre stage and become the main focus of the entire play; incidentally, there’s a film version of the play with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth playing the eponymous characters but I haven’t got round to seeing that either. Having missed its initial run at the NFT back in 2006, a production directed by Trevor Nunn, I was reminded of it when my cousin mentioned seeing it in San Francisco earlier on in the year. When it appeared here in São Paulo, I jumped at the chance to see it, spurred on even more by the thought of what a Brazilian perspective might bring to an English play.
The story follows Jan, a philosophy lecturer in Cambridge in the 70s who decides to go back to his native Czechoslovakia to fight for his communist beliefs, much to the dismay of his mentor Max. As the years roll by, we see how Jan and his friends are treated by the regime whilst simultaneously following the lives of Max and his family in Cambridge. All the while, we see that the one thing that speaks to these characters, that sets generations apart, that divides governments from the people, and keeps one’s faith and beliefs intact is rock n’ roll.
First off, I’ll apologise in advance for the cheesy pun in the title. I thought of going for something like “Rock ’n’ Roll crashes like a Led Zeppelin”; probably a much better title, but then I didn’t think it was that bad. Plus, you can never go wrong with a Rolling Stones reference.
The play is essentially about 3 things: communist theory versus examples of its practical use; the difference between the brain and the mind, i.e. rationality and sensibility; and the power of rock ’n’ roll. Over the course of its 3 hours, it delves deep into the three topics and their inter-relationship, not only within the play but on a wider context as well. I must admit that much of the detail in the dialogues that explored the first two subjects was lost on me, though perhaps that’s because I wasn’t aware of many of the Portuguese technical terms. I feel that to understand it better, I’d have to read the text again in English to have a better grasp of it.
On a more dramatic level however, I felt it somewhat hard to relate to the characters. Since it was an adaptation for a Brazilian audience, it was inevitable that they should tailor it in ways that would make more sense to those sitting in the stalls and beyond. Yet it seemed that they’d pushed this too far, made it too Brazilian. It’s more than likely that this decision was made due to its length and thematic content, but I couldn’t help thinking that this added “Brazilianness” distracted from the play’s text; people seemed to be laughing more at the slapstick tone the production adopted (at times) than Stoppard’s ironic dialogues.
This may sound a somewhat elitist attitude to take yet I’d rather propose it as a cultural observation, especially after what my Brazilian cousin said. She saw it her in São Paulo as well as San Francisco and our opinions were the complete opposite: she felt more at home with the Brazilian production than the more austere American one, which I imagined I might’ve enjoyed more. It makes me wonder then, whether theatre is not as universal an art form as something like cinema: does a play require more adaptation than a film, or can it simply be translated and left at that? Or, conversely, do films actually require more than just subtitles for us to truly understand them?
This is probably too large a question to be answering here and now, best left for a rainy day. As sorry as I’d feel for anyone who’d attempt to tackle that question, I felt even more sorry for the man sitting behind me during ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’. In one scene, Jan and … are having a prolonged discussion about communist theories and its many heroes and central figures. Towards the end of the scene, one of them makes a joke about Karl Marx that drew a laugh from the audience. I overheard the man behind me turn to his friend and ask, “Who’s Karl Marx?”. The poor guy was probably dragged along to the play and didn’t imagine he’d have to be sitting through 3 hours of this on a Sunday night…
