"By the time I was cast in Rock'n'Roll in 2006 I had been following Tom for years. I saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead when it came to London in 1967 with the wonderful Graham Crowden as the Player King. It was a big sensation. The Real Thing was a great play and Arcadia was extraordinary. Rock'n'Roll was w at the Royal Court in London by Trevor Nunn and starred Rufus Sewell as Jan, a Czech student who returns to Prague in 1968."
"It was a fascinating experience, because there were two plays there: the play about Sappho, the Ancient Greek poet, and the play about the Soviet takeover in Czechoslovakia. It was a statement about what Tom believed. In it, he talked about the Plastic People of the Universe, the real-life psychedelic Czech band who were banned by the communist government even though they did not see themselves as political."
"What distinguished Tom as a writer were his clear and purposeful ideas. He knew what his purpose was in everything he wrote and there was no way you could deviate from that. Max was based on Eric Hobsbawm, the great intellectual Marxist, but ideas were more important to Tom than character. I said to him: Why am I sitting here listening to a lecture on Syd Barrett if I'm based on Eric Hobsbawm?"
I was cast in Rock'n'Roll in 2006 after following Tom's plays for years, having seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1967 and admired The Real Thing and Arcadia. Rock'n'Roll, directed by Trevor Nunn at the Royal Court, starred Rufus Sewell as Jan, a Czech student returning to Prague in 1968, while I played Max, a Marxist academic. The production juxtaposed a Sapphic drama with the Soviet takeover in Czechoslovakia and referenced the banned Czech band Plastic People of the Universe. I recalled Cold War suspicions about Western music during work in Russia in the 1980s. Tom prioritized clear, purposeful ideas above character, yet he remained charming and never harsh.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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