Coast Of Utopia

April 1, 2007 | Filed Under Theater |

And I survived the marathon!

The plays started at 11am and ended at 11pm (with an hour and a half for both lunch and dinner). As we came out, they gave everyone a button that said “I Ran A Marathon” (which I thought was very sweet). So how was it? Overall it was tremendous! The play was about these Russian characters from a period after the war with Napoleon to just prior to Communism toppling the last Tsar. We go from Russia to Paris too Italy to London and end in Geneva. The characters were for the most part real people who had lived during this period. So we are talking about a HUGE amount of information… most of which you or I never learned in school. Which is not bad – but with Stoppard (and I have read more than a few of his plays) you can start to feel swamped. Or stupid. There are times where you either want him to slow down so you can catch your breath or rewind him so you can brace yourself and hear his argument again. (That is why you buy the scripts – like I did)

But the production was great. Never slow or tedious. Gorgeous to look at, yet a total economy of movement and sets. And the cast was fantastic! Some performers were in all three plays – some where in just two. Some played the same characters throughout – some played different characters in each play. Very impressive ensemble work. The standouts for me were Billy Crudup and Jennifer Ehle – but Ethan Hawke, Martha Plimpton, Josh Hamilton, Richard Easton, Amy Irving and Brian O’Bryne and the whole cast were truly great.

Lots of politics in the play – with the hook being Russia’s lack of a revolution while France went through two and the rest of Europe at least had one. Not that those revolutions changed anything. The French revolution in the 1840s set up a republic and everyone had the right to vote. They voted for an assembly filled with the same people who ran the monarchy and then one just declared himself emperor. Back to square one! You can set up any democratic republic in any country on the planet and the poor will always vote for the powerful. That will happen in Iraq as well as the US. (How many millionaires are running right now for President?)

Or that great line from The Prisoner – “Everyone votes for the dictator.”

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