Coast of Utopia official site up
Coast of Utopia official site up
jennite
Understudy Joined: 5/6/05
#0Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 9:42am
Here: http://www.coastofutopia.com/
There are full casting details, a backstage blog, an interview with director Jack O'Brien and a full performance calendar. Member tix are available Monday, normal tix September 10th.
Visit the Jennifer Ehle fan blog
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.
Mattbrain
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/23/05
#1re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 12:04pmHooray!
Butters, go buy World of Warcraft, install it on your computer, and join the online sensation before we all murder you.
--Cartman: South Park
ATTENTION FANS: I will be played by James Barbour in the upcoming musical, "BroadwayWorld: The Musical."
Yero
Broadway Legend Joined: 1/29/06
#2re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 12:05pmI'm not too familiar with this... how does the 3 part thing work?
"I have this mental image of Patti barreling down the street and pushing tourists out of her way." -colleen_lee
jennite
Understudy Joined: 5/6/05
#3re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 12:19pm
They're 3 independent plays - you needn't see them all to understand the whole story.
Read the Jack O'Brien interview, he sorta explains it. http://www.lct.org/coast/event_detail_explore.cfm?section=obrien
Some quotage:
"JO: Trevor Nunn, who directed it there, was in fact staging the first part while Tom was writing the third. So in point of fact even Tom didn't see it all. No one knew what they had birthed until long after the event was over. Tom said to me two years ago that he was ready to take it back in his own hands and ask the question: What in fact have I created? Yes, it was a trilogy, but it's a curious trilogy because it doesn't have a dramatic arc; it has an historic arc. And, more interestingly, the work is performed by one company. Sometimes characters are sustained and sometimes they are dropped -- somewhat as in Dickens.
...
BL: What is the shaping idea behind the Stoppard trilogy?
JO: Perhaps the most important idea of this play is: Who has the map in history? Where are we? There is no map. When I pulled my personal camera back into a long shot and tried to figure what the hell I was approaching here, I came back to "the coast of utopia,"which is of course Stoppard's title. When you think about that, and you should think about that, utopia is an impossibility. There is no coastline, because you can't get there.
...
BL: How would describe the basic story for people?
JO: This is at first a Chekhovian story and a story that really happened, and a story about a huge wrong that needed to be righted. To put it in fairy-tale terms: Once upon a time, in a country very far away, there were privileged people and great unwashed masses who were hopelessly, hopelessly poor. And some people thought that was not fair. That people shouldn't own people, that people shouldn't measure their wealth in terms of slaves but in terms of enlightenment. And these relentlessly intellectual guys struck flints against an impassive problem until they started a fire. The trouble with fire is, you can't control it. What they tried to do, for the best possible reasons, ended up, in 1917, with murder and cruelty and unbelievable unhappiness. That was the eventuality of revolution, which some people say has to happen. They say that without a revolution of some kind, you can't really effect change.
BL: How do you characterize each play generally?
JO: The first story in many ways is the wittiest, and the most charming, and most romantic, and the prettiest. The second story, gets a little deeper and a little darker. And people die. The third has a kind of intense intellectual brilliance. The trilogy is a marathon, but a very enjoyable one."
Visit the Jennifer Ehle fan blog
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.
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#4re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 12:28pm
It's a three part epic set in 19th century Russia concerning the philosophers and intellectuals, journalists and poets (and their families and friends) who came up with the ideas and theories that challenged the restrictive tsarist system then in place and who sowed the seeds that led to the Revolution in the early 20th century. The story takes place over a 30 year period in settings from the Russian countryside to exile in Paris and London, shifting back and forth in time throughout, exploring these complicated individuals and their passion and desire to live in a free society.
Part I (The Voyage) runs October and November. Part II (Shipwreck) runs in December and January, in rep with Part I. Part III (Salvage) begins performances in late January and runs in rep with the other two until the production closes in March. If you want to see all three, you can buy tickets to each individually as they open approximately six weeks apart or wait until later in the run and see all three together in, say a single week, or, on three separate dates at the end of the run, in a single one-day marathon (beginning at 11am, I believe, and ending around 11 that night).
If you want to decide which way to do all three, in that same interview mentioned above, O'Brien says:
"[Audiences] might ask themselves: Do we gulp it all down at the same time? Or do we see Part One, read a little bit, then see the second part, then read a little more, and see the third one? That's what I'm hoping. The real aficionados, the historians, for example, will want to see it all in one day, which we're doing at the end of the process."
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 8/5/06 at 12:28 PM
#5re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 12:49pmI guess they aren't using the poster artist who does a lot of the Lincoln Center shows. Not sure what I think of the current picture -- it looks like New England fishermen more than 19th century Russia to me (YMMV, of course).
"What was the name of that cheese that I like?"
"you can't run away forever...but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start"
"well I hope and I pray, that maybe someday, you'll walk in the room with my heart"
myManCape
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/26/05
#6re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 2:25pmAnyone know how they are going to price the 3 marathon dates? Will it be $300 or do they plan to give people a break on the price?
"Have they come yet?"
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#8re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 2:39pm
I don't think they've announced anything regarding ticket prices or discounts for the general public for the marathon or individual tickets.
I know that my member newsletter says that there won't be a discount for us for the marathons, but then we already get very low ticket prices ($30 per ticket per play during previews; $40 per performance after opening; marathons are full member price at $120).
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
gustof777
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/8/04
#9re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/5/06 at 3:24pmI can't wait for this and with that cast and Jack O'Brien AND Tom Stoppard I can't see how this won't be less than amazing
RIP Natasha Richardson. ~You were a light on this earth ~
jennite
Understudy Joined: 5/6/05
#10re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/6/06 at 3:01pm
(a jpgified version of the calendar from the LCT site)
Visit the Jennifer Ehle fan blog
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.
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#12re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/24/06 at 1:19am
Marathon days are $300 -- no discount. Lincoln Center does advance sales to members, but not to the general public through Amex or anything else.
And I remember on the day that tickets went on sale to members a few weeks ago there were a few people complaining about not being able to find good seats for the marathon days (one person said that the best she could do was Row Q and that was just a few hours after tickets went on sale). So I take it that marathon days were selling very briskly to members. Individual dates were fine though (I got a pair of third row center seats for each of the plays). Then again, that was weeks ago and Lincoln Center has a LOT of members.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 8/24/06 at 01:19 AM
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
#14re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/24/06 at 1:34amWhat are your opinions on Ethan Hawke?
"We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in it's flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung, the dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future too."
- Tom Stoppard, Shipwreck
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
LionessInWinter
Broadway Star Joined: 8/23/05
#16re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/24/06 at 10:24pm
Lincoln Center does advance sales to members, but not to the general public through Amex or anything else.
Are you talking about all shows or just for the marathon?
5 friends and I just bought tickets yesterday for all three in a Feb weekend with AMEX Gold cards and we aren't members. I got an email from AMEX about it this week. It's only the $100 seats, not the cheaper ones.
We're in Row J, sides, first six seats in from the middle aisles.
#17re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/24/06 at 10:26pm
How easy/hard do you guys think rush will be for this?
Is it selling well?
"We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in it's flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung, the dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future too."
- Tom Stoppard, Shipwreck
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
#19re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 8/27/06 at 1:43amIn case anyone cares, in the September issue of US Vogue (Kirsten Dunst on the cover), there's a write-up of the show (including a photo of O'Byrne, Hamilton, and Hawke) in the "People are Talking About" section.
jennite
Understudy Joined: 5/6/05
#20re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 9/7/06 at 9:11am
There's an update at the COU blog about the first day of rehearsals: http://www.lct.org/coast/event_detail_explore.cfm?section=blog
Also Martha Plimpton blogs about her research trip to Russia with some of the CoU boys: http://myspace.com/marthaplimpton
Visit the Jennifer Ehle fan blog
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.
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
#21re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 9/9/06 at 9:23pm
Looks like tickets are on sale now (a little earlier than 10am Sunday, as announced).
Edited to fix link.
Link
Updated On: 9/9/06 at 09:23 PM
#22re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 9/10/06 at 9:00am
Phew! I looked last night and the LCT StudenTix page wasn't up and running to buy tix early yet. This morning it was ready to go, and I just spent an hour playing around with dates and ended up just saying the hell with it and taking what I got. A couple dates in there already appeared to be sold out and I didn't even touch the marathon dates, so I don't know how those are faring.
I'm just glad I got in there and snagged what I did, when I did!
But when did New Hampshire become--Such a backward wasteland of seatbelt hating crazies?...I mean, only 40 people actually live there. The others are just visitors who come for the tax-free liquor and three inches of novelty coastline. John Hodgeman on The Daily Show (1-30-07)
Smaxie
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/26/05
#23re: Coast of Utopia official site up
Posted: 9/10/06 at 9:12amI hope this fares well, and I've heard sales are strong. (And what an ad in today's NY Times! Wow!) Stoppard may be the greatest living playwright, and three excellent recent Broadway productions (Leveaux's first rate revivals of The Real Thing and Jumpers and O'Brien's superb The Invention of Love) faded faster in New York than they should have. Yes, his plays are dense and intellectual, but they are often playfully so. I've found that a little bit of background reading on the topics at hand can make Stoppard's plays pay off in spades.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
jennite
Understudy Joined: 5/6/05
#24Updates on Coast of Utopia site
Posted: 10/6/06 at 10:45am
Looky, there are new interviews on the CoU site, with Stoppard, O'Brien, O'Byrne and Hawke. http://lct.org/coast/event_detail_explore.cfm?section=interviews
What's the deal with doing interviews and not publicising them a bit?!
Anywho we're trying to scrounge up whatever CoU news possible at the Jennifer Ehle fan blog: http://jenniferehle.blogspot.com. Got a scan of the Vanity Fair photo with all the principals - see below.
Also StudenTix rego is back up: http://lct.org/studentix/
Vanity Fair photo
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.
