The Romantic Revolutionaries. →[More:]
Tom Stoppard's latest staging in NYC is Coast of Utopia. It's a play that largely draws from historical facts, Stoppard researched the topic for several years, based on the life and actions of the first (indigenous) socialists in pre-revolutionary Russia, like Alexander Herzen and the so called founder of the anarchist movement Mikhail Bakunin. The play is studded with brilliant characters like Belinski, a literary critic and Turgenev an emerging poet and is a prismatic depiction of the deteriorated, claustrophobic society in (imperially fucked up) Russia at the time, the inquiring but really privileged youth (intelligentsia), and the mundane, ineffectual lives of those who crossed paths with them, mostly females of inconsequence: wives, mothers, daughters, lovers and the thousands of deprived peasants.

I saw part one two weeks ago and will get to part two sometime next week. But I wonder if any of you caught it too, in NY or elsewhere (London?). I would love to hear your opinions about the play, the staging, the performances, anything you like to share...