Phillyist Reviews... Rock 'N' Roll

Tom Stoppard sometimes makes me feel dumb. His 1966 play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the only work of his with which I'm familiar that I don't feel I need footnotes for—and even that's only because I'm so familiar with its source material.

I am not, however, familiar with Eastern European political history from 1968 to the present, so I fear that there was a lot of Rock'N'Roll, playing at the Wilma through this weekend, that I missed. To be sure, it's a solid work of drama, full of the engaging incidental characters that Stoppard writes so well. (In general, I find I like his secondary players much better than the primaries.) The writing is dense but smart: while sometimes, it seems like there are too many words, it's impossible to say which should be cut. The only problem is that for such a long show, the audience's lack of familiarity with the material can cause them to disengage from the production and tune out. Fortunately, the scenes are short, punctuated with mostly-familiar music that helps us return our attention to the stage designed by Matt Saunders, which itself is noteworthy for being the rotating platform that Walnut Street's Les Miserables so desperately lacked.

Acting in the show was solid on all counts, and my ambivalence toward Jan, the lead character (played by Barnaby Carpenter in a series of wigs) can be attributed more to my aforementioned thoughts on Stoppard's main characters than to any fault of the actor or director Blanka Zizka (who, it should be mentioned, has a very personal connection to the subject matter—possibly explaining why this play succeeds as much as it does). Despite the play's slower, headier moments, the strong acting, combined with the inventive staging and the (really loud) rock music, keeps the audience from drifting too far and makes the show worth a trip to the Wilma.

Barnaby Carpenter as Jan, Ryan Farley as Ferdinand in the Wilma Theater's production of Tom Stoppard's Rock'N'Roll, running through October 26. Photograph by Jim Roese, courtesy of the Wilma.