Lincoln Center Theater has postponed the first preview of Part Three – Salvage of its current production of the Tom Stoppard trilogy The Coast of Utopia, directed by Jack O'Brien, by one night.
Originally scheduled to begin previews Tuesday, January 30, the production will begin performances on Wednesday, January 31 at 8pm. The postponement is necessitated due to additional rehearsal time needed for the complex three-part production.
Part Three –
Salvage of
The Coast of Utopia will open as previously scheduled on Sunday, February 18. Ticket holders to the Tuesday, January 30 performance can either exchange their tickets for a future performance of Salvage or obtain a refund by contacting the point of purchase of their tickets.
The action of The Coast of Utopia, which premiered at London's National Theatre in 2002, begins in 1833 with Part One – Voyage (which opened in November), set in the Russian countryside as well as in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Part Two – Shipwreck (which opened in December) 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. All three parts will be performed in rotation during the production's limited engagement through Sunday, May 13.
This American premiere of
The Coast of Utopia, is being performed by a company of 44 actors lead by
Billy Crudup,
Richard Easton,
Jennifer Ehle,
Josh Hamilton,
David Harbour,
Jason Butler Harner,
Ethan Hawke,
Amy Irving,
Brían F. O'Byrne and
Martha Plimpton, will be directed by
Jack O'Brien.
"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 idealists, headed by the radical theorist and editor Alexander Herzen (
Brían F. O'Byrne), the novelist
Ivan Turgenev (
Jason Butler Harner), the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky (
Billy Crudup), the poet Nicholas Ogarev (
Josh Hamilton) and the aristocrat-turned-anarchist Michael Bakunin (
Ethan Hawke)," as press notes describe the show.
Lincoln Center Theater is mounting the three parts of
The Coast of Utopia individually, rehearsing and performing each part in turn as the next opens. During the final three and one-half weeks of the production's run audiences will have the opportunity to see all three parts in succession. And on nine Saturdays -- February 24, March 3, 10, 17 and 28, April 2, 21, and 28 and May 5 – theatergoers will be able to see all three -
Voyage, Shipwreck and
Salvage - in one-day marathons beginning at 11am.
The production has sets by Bob Crowley and Scott Pask, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Brian MacDevitt (Voyage), Kenneth Posner (Shipwreck) and Natasha Katz (Salvage) and original music and sound design by Mark Bennett.
The Coast of Utopia is the third partnership between playwright Tom Stoppard and director Jack O'Brien following their collaboration on LCT's award-winning productions of Hapgood and The Invention of Love. LCT also produced Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Director Jack O'Brien returns to Lincoln Center Theater where he last directed the Tony Award winning production of Shakespeare's Henry IV, and, in addition to his work with Tom Stoppard, Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, Tina Howe's Pride's Crossing and Richard Nelson's Two Shakespearean Actors. The Coast of Utopia is scheduled to run through Sunday, May 13. Tickets to all three parts of The Coast of Utopia, priced from $65 to $100, are available at the Lincoln Center Theater box office, at www.telecharge.com or by visiting www.lct.org. For more information visit www.coastofutopia.com.
Photo by Paul Kolnik - Brian F. O'Byrne and Josh Hamilton
