SALVAGE reviews
SALVAGE reviews
#1SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:02pm
Talkin' Broadway is a rave:
The writer remains mightier than the rapier in Salvage, the third and final chapter in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia. But unlike in the previous two installments, Voyage and Shipwreck, this time it’s a much closer call. Now that the gleaming-eyed revolutionists of mid-19th-century Russia have grown up and moved away from their homeland, they’re finally beginning to understand what might have always been implicit in their quest to liberate themselves and others: Sometimes a quill is best filled with blood.
Stoppard himself seems to have absorbed that message as well, as Salvage is the third of The Coast of Utopia that pulses most readily with desires, loss, and regret. From irresistible sexual urges to the desire to incite, inform, and make a difference in a world that deems that nearly impossible, Salvage sweeps through the spectrum of human emotions and experiences with the same gentle violence of a wave crashing against the beach, and is awash in sights, sounds, and sensations that are every bit as soothing. Seldom have giants seemed more recognizably on our scale.
That might just be the single finest achievement of both Stoppard and his director, Jack O’Brien, who have now conclusively proved that, in the theatre at least, living people are not necessarily lost in the tidal ebbs and flows of time. If Stoppard argues something fairly different in the plays themselves, that’s incidental - in The Coast of Utopia, however senseless disappearances may seem, they are never truly without reason. An examination of those reasons and their related repercussions is the overriding theme of Salvage during the 15 years (from 1853 to 186
it documents.
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/UtopiaSalvage.html
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#2re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:13pm
Theatermania is decidely mixed:
Now that The Coast of Utopia Part Three: Salvage, the last of Tom Stoppard's trilogy, has bowed, a verdict can finally be passed on the entire project. Despite vast amounts of talent, time, and benefactors' money having been poured diligently and extravagantly into Lincoln Center's sole Vivian Beaumont offering this season, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Much, much less as it happens, and as Salvage reaches its melancholy coda, the reason for the deficiency is clear. Consciously or unconsciously, Stoppard has been seduced by Thomas Carlyle's contention that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." Wanting to examine the reasons revolutions fail and believing he could write a play with the panoramic scope of a Tolstoyan novel, Stoppard became intrigued by a handful of mid-19th-century Russian figures eager to foment radical change in the homeland they love but have fled for any number of political reasons.
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In fairness to Stoppard, there are numerous times when his wit, insight, and sheer poetic writing shine through the banality. In one scene, Turgenev says to Herzen: "You're talking to a man who's made a literary reputation out of the Russian peasantry, and they're no different from Italian, French or German peasants. Conservatives to the marrow. Give them time and they'll be a match for any Frenchman when it comes to bourgeois aspirations." That kind of barbed talk abounds, just not nearly enough of the time.
Stoppard hasn't been supported as well as he might have been by director Jack O'Brien, certainly not as effectively as he was on the pair's last joint effort, The Invention of Love. Throughout the three plays, O'Brien allows his actors to shout their dialogue as if from the other end of a long tunnel. Moreover, O'Byrne, doing his share of decibel-abusing, is mostly undermined by his one-note (okay, two-note) role. Eventually he's as lifeless as the lank Tom Watson wigs he wears. In Salvage though, Hawke finally gets away with his bellowing now that his Bukanin has turned Falstaffian, while Ehle, Harner, and especially Plimpton seem most at home in Stoppard's diffuse world.
By the time the ambitious Coast of Utopia trilogy comes to close, the reality is that, despite nearly nine hours of playing time, Stoppard has edged no nearer his theatrical Utopia than his characters have gotten to their societal version. As my companion said as she hurriedly exited the theater: "I'd rather have just bought the t-shirt."
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/10100
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#2re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:14pm
It's not a review, but playbill.com has some pictures up from "Salvage" I'll post:
They all look so old! *cries and curses theatremania* They give everything negative reviews though, so it shouldn't be too impactful.
"Are you sorry for civilization? I am sorry for it too." ~Coast of Utopia: Shipwreck
Updated On: 2/18/07 at 08:14 PM
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#3re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:21pm
Yankeefan007's review is a rave:
"I would be lying if I said that I wasn't looking forward to SALVAGE, Tom Stoppard's gripping finale to the "Coast of Utopia" trilogy. I had been eagerly anticipating this afternoon since Part II ended. Thankfully, my high expectations were not let down.
As usual, O'Brien's guided his cast through the dense story with great ease. It's a beautiful production with exquisite technical elements (the opening, alone, makes the 3 hours worth it). The "spoken musical number," which I've entitled "I Say" is one of the most humorous things I've seen in a long time..."
https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?thread=926139&dt=0
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#4re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:26pm
The AP is Positive:
"The passions of their idealistic youth run up against reality and middle-age for the 19th century revolutionaries and intellectuals in 'Salvage,' the third chapter of 'The Coast of Utopia,' Tom Stoppard's masterful trilogy of man's quest for a new and better world.
Rueful resignation isn't as dramatically exciting, so the Lincoln Center Theater production of 'Salvage' doesn't have the innate theatricality that propelled 'Voyage' and 'Shipwreck,' the first two-thirds of Stoppard's mammoth work.
Yet that doesn't stop director Jack O'Brien and his amazing company of actors from breathing urgency into the demanding, sometimes dense conversations of these squabbling European firebrands in exile in Victorian England. It's a strange land for most of them, a place where 'having one's say isn't grounds for arrest.'
________________________________________________________________
One of the themes of 'Salvage' concerns the passing of the torch -- a transfer of power to a new generation of revolutionaries. It's accomplished with only a twinge of sadness. Stoppard produces a generous coda to all who have gone before. His language is simple, direct and heartbreaking, in startling contrast to many of the intellectually high-wire conversations that pepper the three plays.........All three works -- 'Voyage,' 'Shipwreck' and 'Salvage' -- are now running in rep through May 13 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center. Miss them at your peril.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Theater-Salvage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
#5re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:27pmETA: Margo beat me.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 2/18/07 at 08:27 PM
Plum
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/4/04
#6re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:50pm
Funny...I thought Salvage was the most theatrically satisfying of the three parts, even though I agree that the overall trilogy is pretty disappointing. And yes, the actors yelled way too much, though I thought Ehle was as guilty as anyone and Hawke got away with it through the whole thing.
Updated On: 2/19/07 at 08:50 PM
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#7re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 9:53pm
Variety is Mixed-to-Positive:
"Chief among the countless strokes of genius in Jack O'Brien's production of "The Coast of Utopia" was beginning each of the three plays that comprise Tom Stoppard's epic trilogy with the same stirring image. As Mark Bennett's muscular music swells, the silken waves billow in the moody half-light and pensive political thinker Alexander Herzen spins on an elevated chair centerstage, the opening seconds have become like a great title sequence for your favorite highbrow miniseries. Traveling with the drama's cast of exiles and emigres through to the conclusion is exhilarating, edifying and at times a little enervating. But even if the final chapter, "Salvage," is the weakest of the three plays, the overall achievement remains undiminished.
________________________________________________________________
Given that so much of the drama becomes about disillusionment -- as Herzen in particular struggles to accept his dismissal by the new generation of young radicals as obsolete and irrelevant -- perhaps a certain anticlimactic feeling was inevitable. "Failure piled upon loss," is Herzen's illuminating summation. But while O'Byrne's melancholy, deeply reflective characterization channels the play's essence, the emotional impact here pales next to the searing poignancy of part two, "Shipwreck," which for this reviewer is the trilogy's high point.
Binding the physically and intellectually sprawling narrative into a cohesive whole was a tall order and Stoppard goes further than most writers would in achieving this ambitious goal. But the political discourse in "Salvage" is less seamlessly interwoven with the characters' personal vicissitudes and certainly less bracing. It's easy to share Herzen's sadness as, self-exiled in London and later in Switzerland, he feels the chasm separating him from his homeland widen or watches his children become less and less Russian. But his sorrow as the limitations of his impassioned political beliefs are exposed remains more remote.
Unlike the first two plays, the elegance and erudition of Stoppard's writing are undermined at times by the challenge of cramming so much information into a dramaturgical package, with characters often recapitulating events purely for the audience's benefit.
All that aside, there's still more dazzling stagecraft in any one of these three Lincoln Center Theater productions than most companies can muster in several seasons. And the enormous cast is the closest thing New York has seen in a long time to an accomplished repertory troupe."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117932853.html?categoryid=33&cs=1
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#8re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/18/07 at 11:48pm
Brantley is Positive:
"What an ungodly mess. What a heavenly spectacle.
That’s life, eh? Or life, anyway, as it is presented with such exuberance in “Salvage,” the concluding play in the brave and gorgeous New York production of Tom Stoppard’s “Coast of Utopia” trilogy, which opened last night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.
Come to think of it, if you’re someone who is consistently dismayed and enchanted by the upheavals and the silences, the unpredictability and the repetitiveness, the precise patterns and the confounding sloppiness of your behavior and that of those around you — well, you’re likely to find that the lives of Mr. Stoppard’s 19th-century Russian revolutionaries are not so unlike your own.
Can we clear up one thing right away? Despite its status as the season’s ultimate snob ticket, a concert of clever historical name-dropping orchestrated to give middle-brow audiences the illusion of a brow lift, “The Coast of Utopia” is as hot-blooded and teary-eyed as your average afternoon soap opera.
I wouldn’t call it a major work of art. In literary terms I wouldn’t even rank it with Mr. Stoppard’s best (in which I include the Broadway-bound “Rock ’n’ Roll”). But as directed by Jack O’Brien and acted and designed by a stellar team of artisans, “Utopia” is a major work of theatrical craftsmanship, a luscious advertisement for the singular narrative seductiveness of drama. By the way, I arrived at “Salvage” with a headache, a chill and a general reluctance to listen to the fractious chatter of difficult people with unpronounceable names. Ten minutes after the curtain rose I was as hooked as a 10-year-old with the latest “Harry Potter.”
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/theater/reviews/19salv.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1171860204-4ipULa8GbD9qaVmsTUIWaw
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#9re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/19/07 at 3:00am
NY Post gives it 4 Stars:
"THE voyage is com plete, the journey ended. "Salvage," the third and last install ment of Tom Stop pard's dazzling and wonderfully satisfying trilogy, "The Coast of Utopia," opened last night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.
These three plays, now rotating in repertory (for the tough of mind and posterior, there are also nine one-day marathons starting Saturday) offer Stoppard's compelling and satisfying insight into the joys, hopes and weaknesses of the human soul."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02192007/entertainment/theater/coast_treasure_perfect_utopia_theater_clive_barnes.htm
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
jennite
Understudy Joined: 5/6/05
#10re: SALVAGE reviews
Posted: 2/19/07 at 5:11am
Thanks for the roundup. One more from the Toronto Star, about the entire trilogy.
http://www.thestar.com/artsentertainment/article/183165
Visit the Jennifer Ehle fan blog, currently obsessively tracking The Coast of Utopia news: press, blog and forum reviews, interviews with cast and crew, photos, Tonys buzz, etc.
Updated On: 2/19/07 at 05:11 AM
