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  • The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, Salvage)
  • E. Teresa Choate
The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, Salvage). By Tom Stoppard . Directed by Jack O’Brien Lincoln Center Theatre at the Vivian Beaumont, New York City. 030504 2007.

First produced in 2002 by the National Theatre in London, The Coast of Utopiais not the type of theatre most often seen on US professional stages, where spectacle tends to provoke applause rather than contemplation. At a time when the non-musical is falling victim to rapidly shrinking cast sizes, Utopia's forty-four actors played over eighty named characters and countless serfs, servants, émigrés, and revolutionaries. The action, which rose and fell over thirty-five turbulent years and traversed Russia, Germany, France, Italy, England, and Switzerland, demanded massive and ever-changing sets and costumes, as well as a grasp of German philosophy (Hegel in particular) and the French utopian socialists. In close to nine hours of playing time, Voyage, Shipwreck,and Salvagefollowed the triumphs, travels, and travails of six friends who attended Moscow University during the 1830s and who would, by the end of their disparate though interconnected lives, chart the course for modern Russian identity and the Russian Revolution. The Lincoln Center Theatre took a tremendous gamble when it bet on Tom Stoppard's fictional examination of Russia's factual first intelligentsia. But the gamble paid off. Coast of Utopiaproved to be a critical success, breaking the record for most Tony awards for a drama (winning seven) and playing to sold-out houses, while setting philosophical and political arguments about the course of history against the chaotic personal lives of the men who promoted them.

The production owed its success, in large part, to a director and design team that understood how to animate a complex intellectual drama. Theatrically the resulting mise-en-scène departed from the more literal designs of the original London production and served metaphorically to underscore the plays' themes and to clarify complexities in the action. Returning stage images foregrounded the interplay of personal and historical forces while providing a grounding scenographic leitmotif for the audience.

Each performance began identically. The names of the six friends materialized on a proscenium drop: Herzen, Bakunin, Belinsky, Turgenev, Ogarev, Stankevich. This tactic helpfully grounded the audience in a complex story line while also underlining an approach to history rooted in personality. As the curtain rose, intensely evocative music intermingled with the sounds of a storm at sea—again reflecting the play's central themes: the collision of imposed order (music), and natural chaos (storm). The stage then erupted in billowing, dark silk waves as a lone man, Herzen (Brian F. O'Byrne), sat contemplating something small and fragile in his hand, utterly unaware of the surrounding storm. His chair spun downstage and sank beneath the maelstrom that rose around him. In a heartbeat, the waves disappeared beneath the stage floor and each play began. This repeated image, striking but perplexing, gradually took on meaning as the course of these men's lives played out, eventually revealing the heart of this sprawling epic: the personalwill always be at the center of the political. While men may seek to chart the course of history, they can no more do that than predict the path of love or prevent the death of a loved one.

The structural framework for this trilogy hews closely to Hegel's "thesis/antithesis/synthesis" dialectical formula of history, while simultaneously demonstrating the fallacies of that philosophy as revealed in history by Marx's deadly elaboration. The "thesis" is Voyage, set in serf-owning Russia during the brutally repressive regime of Tsar Nicholas I. Shipwreckprovides the "antithesis" as revolutionary ideas are freely expressed in word and fact. Salvagebrings "synthesis" in an ironic resolution: the serfs are freed but revolutions fail, and revolutionary ideas of creating utopia sew the seeds for the hell of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Voyage(covering the years 1833 to 1844) focuses on the halcyon years of youth when it seems entirely possible to control, not only one's own future, but also the future of nations. This first play centers on Bakunin, played at...

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