Rock 'N' Roll

“If I was English I wouldn’t care if Communism in Czechoslovakia reformed itself into a pile of pig shit. To be English would be my luck.” 1968: Russian tanks have rolled into Czechoslovakia, and Syd Barrett has been dumped by Pink Floyd. Jan, a visiting postgrad at Cambridge, breaks with his old professor Max, a Marxist philosopher, and heads home to Prague with his suitcase full of “socially negative music”. Rock ’n’ Roll covers the ensuing 21 years in the lives of three generations of Max’s family while Jan is caught in the spiral of dissidence in a Communist police state. But it’s a love story too - and then there’s the music… Tom Stoppard returns to Hampstead after the triumphant revival of Hapgood (2015). Winner of eight Evening Standard, three Olivier and five Tony Awards, Stoppard’s plays include Leopoldstadt; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Arcadia. Director Nina Raine also returns to Hampstead where her directing credits include her own play Tiger Country (2011 & 2014) and William Boyd’s Longing (2013). “Triumphant! Rock ’n’ Roll is arguably Stoppard’s finest play” The New York Times