"Beginning in mid-19th century Russia during the repressive reign of Tsar Nicholas I, Tom Stoppard's sweeping epic spans a period of thirty years as it tells the panoramic story of a group of Russian intellectuals, headed by the radical theorist and editor Alexander Herzen, the novelist Ivan Turgenev, the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, the poet Nicholas Ogarev, and the aristocrat-turned-anarchist Michael Bakunin, who lead a band of like-minded countrymen in a revolutionary movement in which they strive to change and fix a political system by using their minds as their only weapon."
The action of The Coast of Utopia, which premiered at London's National Theatre in 2002, begins in 1833 with Part One – Voyage, set in the Russian countryside as well as in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Part Two - Shipwreck, begins thirteen years later outside Moscow and follows the characters' exile to Paris, Dresden, and Nice. Part Three - Salvage, takes place over a period of twelve years in London and Geneva.
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