Review-The Coast of Utopia - The Voyage (11.26.06)

The Coast of Utopia - The Voyage (Sunday, 11.26.06, 3 p.m.)
Vivian Beaumont Theatre (Lincoln Center, New York)

Starring: Richard Easton (Alexander Bakunin), Amy Irving (Varvara), Jennifer Ehle (Liubov), Martha Plimpton (Varenka), Kellie Overbey (Tatiana), Annie Purcell (Alexandra), Ethan Hawke (Michael Bakunin), David Harbour (Nicholas Stankevich), Billy Crudup (Vissarion Belinsky), Jason Butler Harner (Ivan Turgenev), Brian F. O’Byrne (Alexander Herzen), Josh Hamilton (Nicholas Ogarev), Aaron Krohn (Nicholas Sazonov), Baylen Thomas (Nicholas Ketscher), David Pittu (Nicholas Polevoy), Adam Dannheisser (Pushkin)

The Coast of Utopia trilogy promises to be a sprawling adventure -- literally decades out of a crucial period in the intellectual life of Russia. Daunting in scale and subject, one almost suspected you would need to attend class before evening thinking of stepping into the theatre.
How wrong that would be.

This Coast of Utopia is grand from its opening moments. The opening scene is marked by a dramatic swell of music, the simulation of stormy waves, and an image of the multitudes, living in destitution and poverty, freezing and barely eking out an existence. They are constantly in the background. Meanwhile, we enter the home of a middle-class family -- in the business of agriculture (what else). They are well educated and touched by the outside world -- they speak many languages and are influenced by the goings on in France, Germany, England. They talk as if they have grand ideas about life, what should be aspired to, and what would be the ideal to come.

The central protagonist in The Voyage is Michael Bakunin, played with great temper and agility by Ethan Hawke. Bakunin is an idea man, one moment wrapped up in the philosophy of one thinker; the next moment enthralled by the ideas of a different one. Bakunin is all about action; he may seem to spew forth many ideas, but in the end the ideas lack coherence. He talks a good talk, but in the end it seems like he will never contribute anything. He dupes his friends into funding his largesse, and never really seems to give anything back. Is he the intelligentsia that will shape the new Russia?

One hopes the answer is no. And yet one is frustrated not only that he is the center of attention, but that his friends and his family let him get away with it and admire him for being what he is (except his father, of course, who sees through him, but voices disapproval for different reasons).

The Voyage, then, is less about the actual ideas that form the new Russian thinking than it is about the people who think they have such ideas. I understand that Stoppard trimmed his script somewhat to streamline it and give it a greater sense of urgency. I suppose the urgency is there, but the result of the cuts (or so I would imagine) is to “dumb down” the exchanges. I have not read the original version of the play, so I cannot attest to what was trimmed, but The Voyage seems surprisingly devoid of the kind of truly witty and engaging exchanges that one comes to anticipate from Stoppard. The situations are there, and the language is floral, but where is the true exchange of ideas?

That said, The Voyage glides along relatively seamlessly, and the nearly three-hour running time passes by rather quickly. Things especially pick up when Billy Crudup’s brilliant turn as Belinsky begins. Crudup is the king of self-conscious portrayal. One almost doesn’t recognize him at first; his matinee idol good looks disguised in frumpiness, long hair, and a padded suit. But he is marvelous. Lacking the intellectual training of his comrades (he, after all, only speaks Russian), he is nevertheless more genuine in his embrace of new intellectual ideas than his more moneyed friends. Crudup’s sense of urgency is different -- it is not about himself, it is about the ideas. Whereas Bakunin’s cause celebre is about aggrandizing himself, Crudup’s aim is at the philosophers. The contrast is striking.

Also excellent is Brian F. O’Byrne, whose brief appearance as Herzen is nonetheless brilliant and makes you yearn for more. When his character steps to the fore in Part II, it promises to be special. O’Byrne knows how to captivate the audience; his grasp of character and language are miraculous.

At the end of the day, this is a glorious production of a good -- though not great -- play. What it does well is to set the mood for the remainder of the trilogy. The Voyage feels not so much like a complete play as the beginning of a journey. One only hopes that as that journey continues, it grows richer than was this first part.