Comments (0) Best Theatrical Production - 2010

Rock 'n' Roll, The Mosaic Theatre

Rock 'n' Roll was the most complex play of the season — a serious meditation on the intersection of politics, ideology, music, and freedom at the end of the Soviet era. Basically: Velvet Underground, meet Velvet Revolution. Set in both crumbling Soviet Czechoslovakia and the home of a jaded English Marxist, Rock 'n' Roll followed numerous people through 30 years of upheaval and argument and in some moments seemed as big and full of mystery as the era it documented. A hyperwordy play, Rock 'n' Roll was made accessible through a loving, whip-smart, and bottomlessly sensitive production that found two brilliant actors — Antonio Amadeo and Laura Turnbull — doing their best work in several seasons, and one brilliant actor, Gordon McConnell, boiling all of Marxism's bright dreams and grim failures down to a low, angry growl.