We could’ve told you that Stoppardmania would require Studio Theatre to extend Rock n Roll—but twice? My, my! The show is now running through June 14, which means an additional two weeks of performances (or one—if you count the original extension from May 31 to June 7). More information at the Studio Theatre site.
And here’s an excerpt from Bob Mondello’s review:
In Rock ’N’ Roll, a Czech-born Ph.D. candidate and Velvet Underground fan is distraught after the communist regime crushes 1968’s “Prague Spring,” while his mentor, a Marxist prof safely ensconced in Britain, persists in believing in the Soviet ideal.
The Czech-born playwright asks us to empathize with the rock-crazed Cambridge grad student even as he gives the mentor the first (and often the last) word in most of the play’s arguments. Blithe, naive, album-collecting Jan (Stafford Clark-Price) has time on his side, while Max (Ted Van Griethysen), his curmudgeonly, if stubbornly idealistic prof, must make do with principle.
“I speak as one who’s kicked in the guts by nine-tenths of anything you can tell me about Soviet Russia,” he laments before Jan has time to bring up Stalin’s abuses. But Max stays loyal to the Party for the other tenth: “because they made the revolution, and no one else.”