ongoing – Sun. Dec. 13

Tom Stoppard’s play at the Huntington Theatre, “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which starts off in 1968, is not all about Syd Barrett, the late founder of Pink Floyd, by any means. It’s about socialism, communism and capitalism and the Velvet Revolution that swept through Prague in the late-‘80s. Stoppard’s dialogue frequently references the writing of Vaclav Havel, playwright, human rights activist and Czech president form 1993-2003. It’s also about the rock ‘n’ roll underground that influenced the Revolution  – especially the dark, lo-fi hippie cult band the Plastic People of the Universe. But Barrett’s story is a thread that prominently winds its way through the lengthy play. The opening bars from Syd's  ferocious song, “Astronomy Domine,” kicks it off in the darkness before the action starts. Barrett’s and Pink Floyd’s music – much of their latter music being about his decline and fall – are important elements. So, the more you know about Syd going in, the more you’ll appreciate “Rock ‘n’ Roll” throughout. And you'll better understand the love that the Czech student Jan – whose life Stoppard has said parallels his own in many ways – and Esme have for Syd and his music. After “Astronomy Domine,” we see a blonde teenaged hippie-chick Esme, in her garden. She is unobtrusively serenaded by someone they call Pan or the Piper – Syd – with a bit of Barrett’s sweet song “Golden Hair.”

Handsome, charismatic and overly fond of LSD, Barrett founded Pink Floyd in 1967, but was with them, really,about two years, when he was forced out of the band. He would miss gigs; he would show up and play badly. He’d write songs where the band tried to follow chord changes that made no sense. He’d yell “Have you got it yet?!” at them and they’d yell back, “No!” … until they realized there was no pattern to get. Barrett was very much their early star, penning “See Emily Play, “ “Arnold Layne” and other skewed gems of the first psychedelic era. But the frustrations overwhelmed the band and Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason brought in David Gilmour to take over. (It was mostly Waters, with some Gilmour contributions, that build the popular mass-appeal Pink Floyd in the 1970s with “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Animals” and “The Wall.”) Nevertheless, they tried to help him launch a solo career, which included two beautiful, but damaged records, “The Madcap Laughs” and “Barrett.” There was a later out-takes album “Opal,” that shows up in “Rock ‘n’ Roll” near the end. Barrett, it appears went mad, likely a combination of the drugs and a pre-existing condition exacerbated by the drugs. He retreated to live, hermitically, in his mother’s basement in Cambridge, tend their garden. He emerged occasionally but rarely. They'd be reported almost like UFO sightings. What always came through: He had become fat, bald, and, it was found out, diabetic. (Complications of that disease killed him.) For years, Pink Floyd fans had fantasies of Barrett's "madness" being something that would, some day, spur him to creative heights. I interviewed Gilmour in the '80s and asked. He said, no, sadly, that would never happen. He was asked a lot; his answer was always the same. There was no "romance" about Syd's illness and his spiral. He was lost to us all. Creatively, he was dead long before his death.

Stoppard told Vanity Fair in 2007 how Barrett came to become such a key character in the play: “It was because of a photograph of a 55-year-old man wrapped up in muffler and gloves, on his bike … Barrett died, 60 years old, a month after [the play] opened, five years after that photograph of him cycling home with his shopping from the supermarket. … I found myself staring at it for minutes, at the thickset body supporting the heavy, shaven potato head, comparing it with images of Barrett in his ‘dark angel’ days.” Stoppard goes on to speak about the disconnection of the photos – the same person but gone for decades and now very “different.” Stoppard: “This is partly how drama works, through constant adjustment of our idea of who people really are under the labels, the ‘Communist academic,’ the ‘Czech rock fanatic,’ ‘the wife dying of cancer’ and the others.” (All three of those people are in the play.)

The play? Set in both Cambridge, England and Prague, it revolves around the clash in Czechoslovakia, the adamant communist arguments of the professor Max (Jack Willis), the way Jan (Manoel Felciano) - both are in the photo, Max left - mixes music and politics, and engages with Max and the others. It’s about freedom and restriction, human rights, love, maturity, the inevitability of change and how people change. One theme that emerges is how rock ‘n’ roll, the best of it anyway, symbolizes dissidence and freedom throughout the whole play. At the end of the first act, when Jan comes home from prison and finds the police have shattered his beloved record collection, he says “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll.” Free from prison, but how free?

It’s directed by leading Stoppard interpreter Carey Perloff. In the program notes, she explains why she found “Rock ‘n’ Roll” so moving. “It insists that human beings are rarely heroic, and that history is always messy and surprising, and that whom and how we love matters more in the long run than abstract political beliefs.”

The 80-minute first act, where we’re getting to know the people, drags some. The characters are talking too much; we’re not sure where it’s all headed. And both Max and Jan have their pompous sides. But things coalesce in the second act and the tension is heightened.

The Tony-nominated play is up Tuesday-Sunday and has been extended through Dec. 13. Tues-Thurs it’s at 7:30, Fri. and Sat. at 8, with a Saturday matinee at 2. Check the times for Sunday shows; some are 2, some at 7 and some times both. No Thanksgiving performance. 

264 Huntington Ave., 617-266-0800 www.huntingtheatre.org