In a matter of a few weeks, Patrick Kwok-Choon has gone from enchanted prince to Marxist rebel.
[rssbreak]
No, it’s about casting, not political conversion. This summer Kwok-Choon played young Ferdinand in The Tempest in High Park, and now he’s in Canadian Stage’s season opener, Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘N’ Roll.
It’ll be the sixth time I’ve seen the actor’s work in the past year he was a standout in a quartet of productions at George Brown Theatre last season.
Kwok-Choon admits that the dense Stoppard play, a hit in London and New York, careens through recent Czech history as well as the lives of Cambridge prof Max, his family, protege Jan and banned Prague rock group the Plastic People of the Universe.
“But it’s our job to be storytellers, inviting the audience to experience what these characters feel and think,” he says. “We have to communicate these heady ideas in a clear, effective way while maintaining the play’s humanity.”
Kwok-Choon plays several roles, including Stephen, the idealistic, politicized boyfriend of the prof’s granddaughter, and the Piper, a version of musician Syd Barrett, who was thrown out of Pink Floyd.
“Rock music is central to the piece, especially during scene transitions. Stoppard wants what he calls smash cuts, with one scene exploding into another, and he uses chunks of music – the Stones, Kinks, Beach Boys and others – to make the switch or comment on the previous scene.”
Turns out that one of the Plastic People musicians, Paul Wilson, is Canadian, and he talked with the company about the impact the troupe had on Czech politics and culture.
“They only wanted to play their music freely, but the government saw them as subversive. The police truncheoned students who went to their concerts.
“Barrett’s also a symbol of freedom in the play. He appears at its opening as a mysterious hippie figure of playfulness later we hear of him as an old, decrepit, strung-out man. Though he may have changed, the sentiments of hope and transformation he embodies are still alive at the play’s end.”
It’s the music that’ll resonate with younger audiences, Kwok-Choon believes.
“Though the play covers the period from the late 60s to 1990, it never loses its youth perspective. The spirit of an underground rock group, Woodstock or a Vietnam protest is still something that people experience today.”
See Previewing, page 84.
