The Coast of Utopia

Tom Stoppard has a trilogy of plays about the Russian Revolution, called the "The Coast of Utopia", opening at Lincoln Center in mid-October. I managed to get back to see one of the three plays in 2002, and it was kind of great, because it was at the National Theater in London, because the actors and atmosphere were freaking terrific, and because it captures a particular period of intellectual ferment and passion so well.

The plays do feel hugely uneven, but then again, so was the Russian Revolution! The charactization of ideas is largely based on Isiah Berlin's "Russian Thinkers", and I always thought that it would have been great to have read the book first and then to have seen the dramatization.

Anyway, the first play opens in New York on November 5th, and then the subsequent plays open in December and then January. As enthusiasm for the plays builds, so will the difficulty of getting tickets, so I really encourage you all to try to get tickets asap. I've always regretted not seeing more of them in London: one only needs to Google the name of the trilogy and read the ecstatic British reviews.