The Stoppard Experience

I would like to preface this by saying it's all in good fun.  I  realize I'm probably about to get shot for this opinion.  I've got my bullet proof vest on.  I would also LOVE to hear anyone's opinions on Stoppard and/or this particular show. 

Tom Stoppard.  Take a seat. We need to talk.  Roughly eight months ago, I attended the first part of your quaint Russian trilogy known as “The Coast of Utopia.”  There were lots of mannequins on stage, a cast that involved about a third of the city’s population, and more Russian pizzazz than a Vladimir Putin bathing in Stoli.  Were it not for a little nagging illness known as Epstein Barr, I would have made it to the remaining two installments that I paid for in advance. 

Even after your Tony Award winning drama put me in the sick ward for eight months (I kid, I really loved what I saw of “Utopia”), I was still willing to give you a chance Tommy boy.  Really, I was.  So last week I decided to sandwich my silliness (Xanadu (#5) and The Little Mermaid) with a healthy dose of intellectualism known as “Rock N Roll.”  You’re so trendy spelling it that way, really.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into. 

When I took my seat I expected the usher to hand me a monocle and caviar, but sadly all I got was a Playbill with enough pre-show reading to fill a semester at Harvard.  I skimmed the program insert, and to be honest, I was lost already.  Judging from the crowd around me, I’m not exactly your target audience, but I can’t help but wonder who you are writing these shows for. 

Let me get the inevitable out of the way.  You’re very smart (a cruel understatement), and the amount of knowledge you cram into your plays is mind-blowing.  I’m just not sure if it’s in a good way.

I’ve come to realize that I savor your plays more for the ideas that they prompt in me rather than the actual material on stage.  I should admit that I’m no Stoppard connoisseur; the show of yours I enjoyed most was “Arcadia,” and that was when I was ten.   Still, it’s refreshing to see something on Broadway that doesn’t supply answers to the audience from the get-go, but the discussions it elicited out of my friend and I were more geared toward the state of theater than the subject of your play. 

With your latest, a dashing tale of communist repression set against the backdrop of the rock and roll revolution, you’ve taken things to a whole new level.  Part of what struck me as strange was the fact that I don’t believe anyone talks the way you’ve written.  As the play unfolded and spanned all the fashions and hairstyles from the 60’s to the 90’s, one thing remained constant, the bizarre monologues.  These indulgent speeches that journey into political territory before veering into existentialism were so frequent that they lost their impact.  Sure, there must be elitists out there who spend their nights dissecting government repression in heated debates with Brian Cox under Howard Harrison’s brilliant lighting.  But under Trevor Nunn’s direction the actors came across so broad in their portrayals at times, that I almost wondered if I was watching a musical. 

At times it felt like I was.  The transitions between scenes, when the action would switch decades, often went on for what felt like…well, decades.  Using classic rock songs to spruce up the evening seemed refreshing at first, as it gave my mind much needed breaks to process the story being told, but by the end I felt like I was listening to the Tom Stoppard iPod commercial.  Who needs Mary J. Blige when you could have someone like Tom? 

The turntable set, that spins as furiously as a worn out record, was inspired in it’s simplistic changes that framed the action on stage through the decades.  Yet the show itself never managed to excite me as much as the set.  Artistic repression to the extent that took place in Czechoslovakia is something I cannot even begin to fathom.  As the heart of your show, I found this subject fascinating but was distracted by the rambling that should have stayed on the periphery but forced its way to the forefront. 

I fear that with shows like this three-hour political drama you have created, audiences are afraid not to like it.  With names like Stoppard and Nunn attached, and a set that acts as a mind-sucking vortex, the audience is stunned into submission by the time the curtain comes down.  Ultimately I did my best to retain my mind throughout.  The idea for the show was fantastic, but the execution left me wanting more.  Am I in the minority?  Sure.  Although I like to believe there are more out there that agree with me but haven’t figured it out yet.       

Comments

[michael]

I have enjoyed your blog for as long as it has been up and have always refrained from posting. But you finally peaked my interest, pushed my buttons, ruffled my feathers...

So here goes...
I hate it when people post who haven't seen the play, but I'm going to anyway.

Wait a minute....

Just got back. Ordered the script from Amazon. It'll be my Xmas reading.

The theatre of elitism can take a bad rap. I think it's important to realize that there are functions that the various types of theatre fulfill. I'll get you Peter Brook's "The Empty Space" for Christmas to give you some thoughtful reading on this issue. He refers to the best of what we might consider elitist as Holy Theatre. It's a fact that a play that caters to a more elite audience is playing to a smaller/different audience than one that caters to "the masses." Neither in itself is good or bad. There are brilliant pieces and dismal pieces in either camp. However, the intellectual nature of the former does put a kind of pressure on an audience. No one likes to feel ignorant, and I think Stoppard, from having read interviews on this subject, is trying to bring his material in line with a larger (less elite) audience. But the things that intrigue his mind, dramatically and philisophically, cannot be broken down past a certain point, I think. So the audience member is left with the conundrum, "Do I do extra work in order to "enjoy" the play, and what am I willing to do?" For instance, if one happened to be involved in a two week class that dealt with issues of artistic repression in eastern Europe during the period of time covered in the play, and then went to the performance, one might enjoy the experience more. Brooks has some very interesting things to say about the audience and how much they influence the experience of viewing a play. Not as an excuse or condemnation of either playwright or audience, but as an observation that there is a responsibility on both sides.

Also, regarding the monologues; I'd be interested to look at them and compare them with Shakespeare's. One of the raps against Stoppard since the beginning has been that he is all intellect and no emotion. One of the reasons Arcadia "works" so well is that the story engages us emotionally more than any other Stoppard play that I have read or seen. Shakespeare is the master dramatist in all areas, and to look at the speeches from Hamlet, for instance, is to see the masterful use of intellect coupled with emotion. I think it would be interesting to look at one of the offending monologues from Rock n Roll and compare it with one from Hamlet to see why Shakespeare may get it right more than Tommy boy.

And as far as putting up philisophical treatises on the stage rather than good old drama, you might want to explore George Bernard Shaw, both at his most and least accessible. Most, being perhaps Pygmalion, and least, being Man and Superman. I love both plays and enjoy having someone who can think at a more heightened level than myself. At his best Shaw does this, and I think Stoppard does as well. In fact, I think Stoppard is maybe more a relative of Shaw's than anyone else.

Finally, on the issue of performance, it sounds like I might not have like the performances either. I'm not a fan of bellowing actors. Brooks also refers to an experience he had when touring a production of King Lear throughout Europe and then bringing it to the US. This is back to the audience/actor relationship. He found it amazing that when they were in Russia the audience was an incredibly powerful force for good in relation to the performers. Though they didn't understand the language they related to the themes of the play deeply, and "got it" even with that barrier. As a result, the actors work became more subtle and nuanced. He was amazed how delicately they could play the play. On arrival in Philadelphia, the first stop in America, he was dismayed to see what had happened. For some reason, even thought the audience knew the language, at least more than the Russians, they didn't relate to the play in a way that made the core of it important to them. The actors, in response, pushed harder, trying to reach them, and what had been subtle and delicate in Russian became overdone and melodramatic here. Again, Brooks isn't blaming anyone. There is no way you can change an audience during a performance. They are exactly as smart, as willing, as open or closed as they are. No more no less. And all of this is interesting, but sometimes there is just plain bad acting and direction.

Anyway, to put it as simply as I can after my rant, the question at the heart of your reaction to Rock n Roll is, "What should an audience have to know in order to enjoy a play?" And my response is, "What is an audience willing to learn in order to meet the playwright half-way?" An interesting and unresolvable issue, but one that any theatre-goer should ponder.

[jolene]

"I fear that with shows like this three-hour political drama you have created, audiences are afraid not to like it."

This sounds an awful like what was going on in the trilogy of the Coast of Utopia. People were afraid to say anything negative about it, but people were leaving the theater, puzzled at what the hype was about. It sounds a little bit of the Emperor's new clothes effect.

[Kate Lennard]

Having seen the play here in London, I can only say, Matthew is right, but he's not gone far enough. It's a pretentious load of wank.

Emperor's New Clothes, indeed. Stoppard's such a sacred cow that no one's got the balls to say what's on stage is a great big self-indulgent mass of cow dung.

And Michael, meet Stoppard half way? Well, I'd try but for the fear of never being able to remove my head from his lower intestine.

[jennifer]

M, like you, I loved the first part of the Utopia trilogy...maybe it was best that you missed the next two parts because once I got over the brilliant intellectual dialogue of Stoppard (I even started to read some Russian history books to prepare myself for Utopia), the next two parts of the Utopia trilogy proved that Stoppard's play was fake elitist bunk with nothing underneath its frilly distracting surface.

Doing research before you see a theatrical event should not be a requirement in attending as an audience member...talk about being inaccessible! Research should be inspired either before or after the theater event, if the audience member is drawn to do so.

[jennifer]

btw, i love this NY Times article about Stoppard's Utopia, "Utopia is a Bore: There, I said it":

"to admit dissatisfaction [with Stoppard's Utopia] or outright dislike is to advertise one’s intellectual obtuseness or philistinism. The coercive reasoning goes something like this: Everyone says it’s brilliant; I am bored; therefore I am not smart enough to appreciate its brilliance. The play isn’t a failure: I am."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/theater/04ishe.html?ex=1171342800&en=5ddfc605a65296e3&ei=5070

[Miriam Madry]

Matt again I don't know anything about theater but have you heard the new Mary J. song??? In case you haven't, you def should http://youtube.com/watch?v=9ETfNxDVlpQ

[Keith]

Hmmm. I liked it and Utopia. Maybe it's an age thing. Nah.

[BG]

I loved ARCADIA, and I was moved by THE INVENTION OF LOVE. However, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of JUMPERS, and I am not a dunderhead.

[Esther]

I definitely agree with you about "Rock 'n' Roll." It's vastly overrated. I was intrigued by the topic, but the play just left me bored and frustrated. I didn't connect with any of the characters. Stoppard's idea was interesting - contrasting the difference between being a Communist academic in England and actually living under a Communist government in Europe. But he didn't really write characters that I cared about. I never got a real sense of why Max became a Communist, or what it was like for Jan to live under a repressive government. Moving back and forth between the two just made things worse. And the short snippets of rock music didn't really tell me much about the scene that followed.