Because I have OCD that manifests itself in stalking my Literary Heroes, I couldn't help but notice the review The Miami Herald ran in today's edition of Mr. Stoppard's latest play, Rock 'n Roll. The headline was fair:
Rock 'n Roll Delivers Tension, Tenderness.
That struck me as vague enough to come from someone composing the page without the benefit of really reading the review. A rather wide net that could catch most anything in the copy below.
But then you decided to write a sub-head (damn that white space).
Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, an intellectually challenging yet undeniably engrossing play, opens at Mosaic Theatre in Plantation.
What grabbed me right away, of course, is the word "yet." It seems to me you're trying to connect two concepts that don't normally go together, much like when we learned to play with magnets that we could never match N to N or S to S. So, now I'm interested: If something is "intellectually challenging" what does normally follow? A fogged over expression as the neck relaxes and the head rolls back into the seat just before real stupor sets in?
Oh, my Miami comrades, have we come to this? And if we play the sentence from back to front? What usually precedes "undeniably engrossing" in Miami? Perhaps I should check the Neilson's for Florida. Let's see..... Yes. It was the re-run of CSI.
But I'm going to have to drag in the reviewer after all, Ms. Christine Dolen, because she suggests that theater goers should arrive early so they have time to study the setting of the play and laid out for them in the program. Yes, indeed, the events of Prague in 1968 is wrapped in misty incomprehension for those who missed that whole Communism thing. But Ms. Dolen's efforts were rewarded. Notice how she appreciates the performance:
But Stoppard, director Richard Jay Simon, a sublime cast and design team tell a compelling story, one full of wit, insight and theatricality.
... and theatricality. Well, that's certainly fortunate for an audience sitting in a theater and not the dog track next door.
