NO ROLLING, NO ROCKING, JUST DOZING AT PICT

10. May 2009 by admin.

NO ROLLING, NO ROCKING, JUST DOZING AT PICT

                From the time Pittsburgh and Irish Classical Theatre (PICT) announced its season, I have been anxiously anticipated seeing Rock-N-Roll by Tom Stoppard.  A play about rock music and revolution?  Great!  A play surrounding events in Czechoslovakia (homeland to my mother’s family)?  Even better. 

           But my excitement began to dwindle soon after arriving at the Henry Heymann Theatre. 

           First, the play’s running time is advertised as two hours and forty minutes.  Okay, if a play is engaging, I’ll sit that long.  Next, there were voluminous program notes and additional material to help the playgoers understand the play.  Well, I am a person of average intelligence—I’ll understand.  Finally, PICT has offers the audience a sixty page glossary ($5) to aid in grasping the show.  Now, I thought, we are in BIG trouble.   

         Yes, Rock-N-Roll had a Broadway run and garnered all sorts of awards.  But it is also dull and talky and has a coldness about it that makes it very hard to care about these people.  Big things do happen in the play—people are jailed, people die,  people revolt—all off stage.  We just get to hear about it. 

                       Adding to the slowness of the talky scenes are long blackouts (for simple set changes) and crosses when we wait for an actor to travel the circumference of the auditorium to make an entrance 

           Sam Redford plays the central character of Jan, a rock-n-roll enthusiast and a sometime journalist and a sometime academic.  Redford seems to play everything on the same level, and after a while I am ready to smash his beloved record collection!  As Max, Jan’s mentor, Sam Tsoutsouvas is a cold harridan.  The very talented Jarrod DiGiorgi is wasted in the thankless role of Ferdinand, who chief interest seems to be getting people to sign petitions. 

           There are some bright spots. 

           Helena Ruoti gives an impassioned portrait of Eleanor, Max’s wife who is battling cancer.  Sometimes caustic, sometimes vulnerable, Ruoti plays ever level beautifully.  Tami Dixon has a hysterically funny turn as Lenka, a student.  Valentina Benrexi is a also a student…a very up-tight student.  And she makes her small role memorable. 

           The set by Narelle Sissons is long and narrow, resembling a lane in a bowling alley.  It provides very little depth for Director Andrew Paul to create stage pictures.  Perhaps it all looks better from the center section, but its flatness does nothing to enhance the view from the sides (where I was sitting).  There are eighteen mini-screens, resembling old Polaroid photographs, and they do add some color (and alert the audience to the year and location of the next scene).  It’s a clever idea, but I’m not sure everyone got it.  

                      How does it all end?  Beats me.  I left at intermission.  That seemed better than returning for Act Two and joining the ranks of the half-a-dozen-or-so folks I watched dozing through Act One. 

           I’m sure there is an audience for Rock-N-Roll.  I’m just not part of it. 

           Rock-N-Roll continued through May 30

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