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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
As told to Mark Fisher

Brian Cox on Tom Stoppard’s sensational Rock’n’Roll: ‘I looked through the curtain and saw Mick Jagger and Václav Havel’

Tom Stoppard arriving at the 2008 Tony awards in New York, where Rock’n’Roll was nominated for best play.
Tom Stoppard arriving at the 2008 Tony awards in New York, where Rock’n’Roll was nominated for best play. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

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 at the Royal Court in London, directed by Trevor Nunn, and starred Rufus Sewell as Jan, a Czech student who returns to Prague in 1968. I played Max, a Marxist academic. 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.

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