re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#1The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 6:10pm
The AP is Positive:
""Voyage" is a tantalizing curtain raiser, a taste, one hopes, of what's to come.
The play is the opening salvo of Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia," a nine-hour trilogy that is epic in its sweep, yet, judging from this first episode, surprisingly personal, intimate even, in the emotions that flow through this passionate piece of theater.
______________________________________________________________
If Stoppard's language is dense (at least for the men), the production design — sets, Bob Crowley and Scott Pask; costumes, Catherine Zuber; lighting, Brian MacDevitt — is buoyant and staggeringly beautiful. There are some memorable images, particularly an endless line of peasants spread across the wide Beaumont stage, and a wintery Russian palace, looking as if it were constructed out of ice.
Despite the many changes of seasons in "Voyage" and the liveliness of the talk, there is an autumnal, almost Chekhovian feeling to the proceedings. It's the beginning of the passing of the old order although no one seems to realize what exactly is happening. Yet it's this anticipation of the unknown — and the willingness to confront it — that makes "Voyage" so theatrically vibrant."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/11/27/entertainment/e140444S00.DTL
"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: 11/27/06 at 06:10 PM
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#1re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 6:54pm
Talkin Broadway is Positive:
"There are few greater pleasures in living a theatre-full life than expecting to be drowned by a towering show and instead finding yourself washed away on a tide of exciting, thought-provoking entertainment that nonetheless eventually deposits you safely on shore. Or should that be the coast?
Let's go with that, if only for the moment. For tribute must be paid to The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard's epic trilogy of plays that just got its official start with the opening of its first chapter, Voyage. Lincoln Center Theater is occupying itself with this mammoth opus for the better part of the season, and if you want to step foot in the Vivian Beaumont between now and March, the only way to do so is by way of 19th century Russia. Believe it or not, this is less threatening - and more rewarding - than it sounds.
Despite Stoppard's not entirely undeserved reputation for writing dense plays on esoteric subjects ranging from philosophy and chaos theory to literature and England's occupation of India, Voyage is some of the most instantly accessible Stoppard Broadway has seen in years. Advanced word from London, where The Coast of Utopia premiered a few years back, was that the work was compelling and brilliantly written but stuffy and perhaps even self-absorbed. Under Jack O'Brien's direction here, Voyage doesn't smolder or steam - it crackles and blazes.
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It's there, though, that the production's sole caveat rears its hazy head: This is not, in and of itself, a full play. If you're expecting a well-rounded, self-contained dramatic piece, you won't find it here: Voyage is less exciting for the glimmering jewels it contains than the stars it promises. While you can delight at Stoppard's masterful construction of the framework for the rest of the trilogy, payoffs at this point are few and far between, if not altogether nonexistent.
The sparkling, ghostly majestic sets of Bob Crowley and Scott Pask, which hauntingly evoke everything from the unwashed masses to the familiar spires of St. Basil's Cathedral; Catherine Zuber's countless handsome costumes; and Brian MacDevitt's spirited lighting are already beyond reproach, and might well only get better in the shows to come. But it's unusually challenging to appraise the performances this time around, as practically nothing exists here solely on its own terms.
Crudup's antic literary critic, a lone voice against a deafening chorus of silence, seems a major highlight, and Crudup lands every laugh in traversing the treacherous territory of this definitely dangerous young man. And I wasn't taken at all with Hawke's manic, unfocused Michael, who seems more like a Vietnam draft card burner than a hopeful idealist, and draws his convictions from the surface of his skin rather than the depths of the soul that his compatriots plumb. Hawke might, however, be setting up this expectation to grant more impact to a cataclysmic fall later on; I wouldn't put it past him. The supporting players, including Richard Easton (here as Michael's disapproving father), Amy Irving (as Michael's mother), and Jennifer Ehle and Martha Plimpton (as Michael's sisters), are all superb, communicating a continuity and community that give even this wading pool of an opener a real, satisfying depth.
Even if titanic major events here are few and far between, they fulfill their most important function of setting the stage for the world-changing conflicts to come. What all will those involve? Only time will tell, and judging from the foundation that's been laid here, it can't tell us soon enough.
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/UtopiaVoyage.html
"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: 11/27/06 at 06:54 PM
jennite
Understudy Joined: 5/6/05
#2re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 7:38pmThanks Margo! So the opening performance's done already? I thought it started at 6pm today.
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
#3re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 7:51pmThe performance is still going on. As a courtesy, most publications wait until after the opening night curtain goes up to post reviews online (though they occasionally pop up before then). The reviews are already filed since they're based on one of the critics' previews from last week and not on tonight's opening performance.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
queendork
Understudy Joined: 6/28/06
#4re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 8:29pm
Thanks for these. I saw the show on Friday and was, sadly, disappointed by a lot of the performances. I'm not sure if my disappointment can be traced back to having read the plays beforehand or not...
Updated On: 11/27/06 at 08:29 PM
#5re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 8:30pm
I'm so excited. I got the boxed set of the three plays to prepare myself for my Voyage expierence!
YAY!
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
#6re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 9:21pm
you're one damn precocious kid, CQT 
RIP glebby <3
#7re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 9:24pmForced my dad to buy tickets earlier before the reviews came out for all three parts...I CANNOT wait.
"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
Heybeenfood
Broadway Star Joined: 5/15/06
#8re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 9:47pmI got tickets yesterday just for Voyage. I hope I can get the rest of them. I am looking forward to this and I am surprised that it has found such a large audience. Stoppard isn't the typical theatergoer's cup of tea. I think he is brilliant, but I am still surprised.
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#9re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 10:26pm
The Times is Positive:
"The world turns quickly in Lincoln Center Theater’s exhilarating production of Tom Stoppard’s “Voyage,” the first installment of his “Coast of Utopia” trilogy about Russian intellectuals in the 19th century dreaming of revolution.
It isn’t simply the industriously employed revolving stage of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, where the play opened last night, that gives the heady sense of an entire culture about to spin off its axis. As directed by Jack O’Brien and performed with freshness and vigor by an immense and starry cast led by Ethan Hawke and Billy Crudup, “Voyage” pulses with the dizzying, spring-green arrogance and anxiety of a new generation moving as fast as it can as it tries to forge a future that erases the past.
The play may have been written by a man in his 60s, and its principal performers are at least into their 30s, yet even more than in its London incarnation at the National Theater, where I saw it four years ago, “Voyage” is paced and defined by the quicksilver changes of mood and conviction that come from being young in a time of flux — by the feeling that everything and nothing is possible. It’s a work infused with the metabolism that lets college students talk furiously until dawn about big thoughts they are sure have never been thought before.
Given this play’s awareness of the futility of prophesying, I am not going to predict that the succeeding parts of this production of Mr. Stoppard’s trilogy — “Shipwreck,” which opens on Dec. 21, and “Salvage,” which opens on Feb. 15 — will maintain the same standard as its characters slide into middle age and disenchantment. But youth, at least, has been served in high style.
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Mr. Stoppard, Mr. O’Brien and the genius set designers Bob Crowley and Scott Pask have refitted and streamlined the play in ways that both quicken pace and enhance clarity. And not to sound shallow when the subject is so deep, but did I mention that it all looks absolutely ravishing?
________________________________________________________________
As for the central performances, there isn’t space here to describe them in the detail they warrant. If some lack the subtlety of their London predecessors, none are wanting in present-tense vividness. (Mr. Easton, Amy Irving, Jennifer Ehle and Martha Plimpton, as members of the same fraught family, are especially affecting. And I enjoyed David Cromwell’s take on an aging, worldly man of letters.)
Though Herzen dominates the trilogy (and the brooding Mr. O’Byrne certainly seems up to the task), it is Bakunin fils and his friend Belinsky, a socially inept literary critic, who set the energetic pace for “Voyage.” The duty is joyously fulfilled by Mr. Hawke, born to play the excitable egoist Bakunin, and Mr. Crudup, unmatchable in conveying the discomforts of self-consciousness.
When the house lights came up at the end of “Voyage,” I felt as if a thick novel in which I had totally lost myself had been snatched from my hands. Bring on the next chapter, please. I can’t wait to watch these young idealists grow up."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/theater/reviews/28coas.html?ref=arts
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
#10re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 10:37pm
why wasn't there a special BWW banner for Utopia!??
And why are there duncan sheik you-tube clips running willy-nilly around this board?
CRAIG! ROB! WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#11re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:06pm
Reuters is Mixed-to-Positive:
"When the Lincoln Center Theater presents a new work by Tom Stoppard, it means one thing for theatergoers: homework time. This is particularly true of "The Coast of Utopia," the playwright's massive, three-part, nine-hour trilogy documenting the passions of Russian intellectuals in the 19th century. Unlike the previous production at London's National Theater in 2002, here the three works are being opened separately over the course of as many months so audience members can at least take more time to attempt to familiarize themselves with the events and figures on display.
The first part, "Voyage," is, as with so many of Stoppard's works, alternately fascinating and tedious, poetic and discursive, informative and frustrating. It offers many rewards for those with enough patience to endure its Chekhovian longueurs, but it is hard not to wish that the playwright had demonstrated a little restraint and perhaps reined in its sprawling focus.
______________________________________________________________
Even with its three-hour length, there's an inevitable feeling that the first part is but a setting of the scene, with its convoluted, time-shifting narrative failing to cohere in satisfying fashion. Instead, one must appreciate, as always, the beauty and wit of Stoppard's language, especially as delivered here by the excellent ensemble, and the expansive history lesson that the text provides.
______________________________________________________________
O'Brien's staging, performed on Bob Crowley and Scott Pask's simple but effective set and beautifully illuminated by Brian MacDevitt's dramatic lighting, expertly and fluidly handles the complicated action. From its startling opening tableaux featuring what seems like literally dozens of people onstage to its quietly intimate moments, it provides a vivid theatricality to match the complex intellectual ideas on display. "
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=stageNews&storyID=2006-11-28T035026Z_01_N27163539_RTRIDST_0_STAGE-STAGE-UTOPIA-DC.XML&WTmodLoc=EntNewsTheatre_C1_%5BFeed%5D-4
"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
#12re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:19pm
Theatremania is Negative:
"Tom Stoppard knew it was too late for him to write an authentic 19th-century Russian novel, so he's done what he must consider the next best thing. He's written a play that can pass for the adaptation of a 19th-century Russian novel. The drawback is that Voyage -- the introductory part of Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia trilogy being presented this season by Lincoln Center Theater -- registers as an earnest but uninspired translation to the stage of something that would be richer and more substantial on the printed page. Throughout the nearly three-hour work, you have the urge to consult the source material for clarification and amplification -- only there's no Tolstoy-like tome available to turn to.
Actually, that's not entirely true. There are the myriad sources through which Stoppard thumbed in preparation for his fictional account of several prominent figures involved in fomenting the turbulence of pre-revolutionary Russia from 1833 to 1870; they're just not at an audience's fingertips.
_______________________________________________________________
Where Stoppard has lucked out is in the physical production that Bob Crowley and Scott Pask have designed. It's full of eye-popping details lighted intricately by Brian MacDevitt. Not the least of these attractions is a tall, crystalline winter palace hanging at the back of the stage over a group of skaters. (The reflecting floor on which members of the 36-strong cast glide is a holdover from Crowley's set for Stoppard's Invention of Love.)
Another stunning image in a non-stop series of stunning images is a mass of veiled statues representing Russia's serf population. During the first act they remain visible through upstage scrims -- and they are returned to their ominous ranks in the second act as reminders that downtrodden hordes don't obligingly disappear.
Where Stoppard hasn't been so fortunate is Jack O'Brien's puzzling direction. Moreover, a stellar cast has been rounded up to behave decidedly non-stellarly. Hawke, so spectacular last season in Hurlyburly, brings no finesse to Michael; from start to finish, he acts like a class-room cut-up. With the exception of Plimpton and Easton, the rest of the Bakunin family -- all of whom are said to speak five languages -- shout at each other like thespians in a community-theater Chekhov production. So does Crudup, who makes Belinsky seem like just a big loudmouth. On the plus side, Harner, who appears rather briefly in this part of the trilogy, manages to look as if he understands subtlety as an acting technique.
Stoppard has written many impressive theater pieces in his long career. While his accomplishments may be genuinely Arcadian, at the moment, they only skirt Utopia's elusive coast."
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/9517
"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: 11/27/06 at 11:19 PM
#13re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:23pm
I was there tonight, and had NO idea it was the opening performance.
A young man was outside the theater handing out a laughable review of the play, discouraging people from seeing it. I read it when I got home. His biggest complaint was that there were no Jews depicted in the play (the reviewer's criticism of Ethan Hawke's character - that in real life he had little to no impact in Russian political history- is, well, precisely the point.) Nevermind that Stoppard was writing fiction, based on history, yes, but with liberties taken. Even at 9 hours, you can't expect COMPLETE historical accuracy, nor should that be the aim of art.
Anyway, I'm glad to read the positive reviews, as I found the play to be STUNNING. The acting was good all around, though the real standout was Billy Crudup. I was left wanting more. I'm looking forward to parts 2 and 3.
Oh, also, I knew little to nothing about Russian history, and had no problem following the story. It is an engaging and at times quite thrilling play, and really shouldn't be missed.
Updated On: 11/27/06 at 11:23 PM
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#14re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:26pm
Variety is Postive:
"It's conceivable that many will approach "The Coast of Utopia" as a highbrow cultural chore. The opening installment of Tom Stoppard's trilogy, "Voyage" is a lengthy play about philosophy, politics, literature and intellectual life in pre-Revolution Russia as well as, in many ways, an extended prologue to the six hours still to come. Sound arduous? It's not. With one magnificent theatrical flourish within the first few minutes, director Jack O'Brien has swept away all sense of trepidation, providing thrilling assurance that this brawny, brainy dissertation could not be in more capable hands..
There's more talk than drama spread across Stoppard's extended canvas, which certainly requires concentration. But regardless of one's interest in 19th century Russian history, the novelistic play is a spry, witty and thoroughly intriguing account of men and ideas.
O'Brien has conquered the more inaccessible peaks of Stoppard's scholarly expeditions before. In his Lincoln Center Theater production of "The Invention of Love," he rendered the playwright's daunting erudition, meticulous research and seemingly academic subject (poet and classicist A.E. Housman) cogent, immediate and even emotional. And with his last job at the Beaumont, "Henry IV," the director proved his muscular wrangling skills with a large cast and sprawling drama.
His command here is even more impressive. Working with an expert ensemble (some of whom play other roles in parts two and three), O'Brien again finds not only the beauty but the air and light in Stoppard's dense language.
________________________________________________________________
Using the full depth and imposing height of the Beaumont, the stage pictures here are breathtaking. Whether it's an elegant fancy-dress ball or skaters on a winter pond, with a glass rendering of St. Basil's Cathedral dripping icy stalactites above, the imagery is gorgeous. Catherine Zuber's richly detailed costumes and the delicate textures of Brian MacDevitt's lighting also are vital in making the play as alive visually as it is intellectually.
As much as the staging is vigorously theatrical, O'Brien's direction is also cinematic. With resourceful use of a turntable on the black, lacquered stage, he instills remarkable fluidity into a drama covering more than a decade and numerous principal characters, while precisely directing the audience's focus within each vast, handsomely composed frame.
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O'Brien, his cast and creative team have set themselves a formidably high standard with "Voyage." If they can maintain it in "Shipwreck" and "Salvage," New York will have another theatrical epic to stand in terms of magnitude, ambition and achievement alongside such milestones as "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Angels in America."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117932212.html?categoryid=1265&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
#15re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:33pm
I wonder if that TheaterMania review is gunna sink the play...
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
#16re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:34pm
Just posted my review after seeing it this evening. Fantastic!
https://nycriticscorner.broadwayworld.com/thecoastofutopiavoyage.htm
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#17re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:41pm
Ethan Hawke's character, Michael Bakunin, was, in fact a MAJOR figure in Russian Political history -- he's considered the father of modern anarchism and was a seminal inspiration a generation later for the Bolsheviks who led the Russian Revolution of 1917, overthrowing tsarist rule.
As for there being no Jews in this play, well, I don't know if that's true or not (I haven't read the next two plays yet), but is there some reason the young man thought that there were supposed to be Jews in this particular play? Stoppard (who is Jewish) is writing about a very specific group of Russian intellictuals and their families, during a very specific era of Russian history -- nearly every one of these characters were real people in history who's lives did intersect in various ways during the period in question. If they weren't actually Jewish in real life, then was Stoppard supposed to make them Jewish anyway for some reason?
"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: 11/27/06 at 11:41 PM
#18re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:45pma negative theatermania review alone couldn't squash a fly. This one will do JUST fine all on its own fantastic merit.
#19re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:48pmyay sarcasm
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
#20re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/27/06 at 11:55pmJust a question: The run is probably going to sell out fairly soon. So I want to get tickets but I'm not that in to plays so don't want to pay full price unless I know I'm going to love it. So based on the plays I've seen could someone just tell me if they'd think I would enjoy it? I loved Doubt, The Pillowman, The History Boys, and Losing Louie. I hated Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Awake and Sing! and Heartbreak House.
#21re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/28/06 at 12:12amYeah - on a scale of 1-10, how boring is this play?
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#22re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/28/06 at 12:12am
I'm guessing that anyone who doesn't like the intense verbal fireworks of VIRGINIA WOOLF or Odets' lyrical colloquial dialogue in AWAKE AND SING! or the Shavian wit of HEARTBREAK HOUSE (in admittedly a less than stellar production) will probably hate 9 hours of Stoppard's dense intellectual wordplay. Just a guess........
"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: 11/28/06 at 12:12 AM
#23re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/28/06 at 12:18amAlright, thanks you just saved me $300.
#24re: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Reviews
Posted: 11/28/06 at 12:30am
I hesitate to give that person any credit by posting his review, but you bring up some good points, Margo. So here are portions of the "review" the man was handing out:
First and foremost: Why write about Bakukin and Herzen? They are both political dead ends and left no mark whatsoever on Russian revolutionary politics.
Even though I'm unfamiliar with either figure, this statement struck me as, well...wrong. He cites no sources to back up this, or any other claims. And the question of "why write about them" is insane. Had this person bothered to read the EXCELLENT Stoppard interview in the Lincoln Center Theater Review, he might understand why the playwright was compelled to write about these people. Not that he needs an excuse, nor should justify his decision to focus his trilogy on these characters.
Second: Where are the Jews? In the Russian revolutionary movement, at both the leadership and cadre level, Jews represented up to one half of the membership.
There is not one Jew in the trilogy. Marx makes a brief appearance in Salvage, but we are here concerned with the Russian Social Democratic movement, not a baptized German Jew.
A lot of babble, then he goes on to state:
Bakunin was at best an agitator who created no political movement nor did he write a critique of capitalism as did marx and Engels. He left no body of writings that influenced any political movements.
He was also an anti Semite who thought Marx was in league with the Rothschilds to control the world, though this is never mentioned in the play
And:
It is quite inconceivable thart anyone would write a play about the Russian Revolutionary movement without a Jew in sight.
He goes on to list several "well known Jews" who do not appear in the play: Pavel Axelrod and Theodore Dan (2 of the founders of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party), Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Sverdlov..etc
As for the production itself, he writes:
The play itself is boring. The staging and acting of the four Bakunin sisters makes it impossible to distinguish one from the other
Perhaps had he paid attention, instead of looking for the Jews, he might've been able to tell them apart (for the record, that statement is ludicrous. If you can't tell the 4 sisters apart, you're an idiot)
Amy Irving as Bakunin's mother has no presence on the stage
I disagree, but fine. He's entitled to his opinion.
Richard Easton's Alexander Bakunin is merely a fool
Wow...what insightful critique.
Billy Crudup makes the most of Belinsky, but he is lost on the huge stage in this huge theater .
Ethan Hawke never says his lines; he screams them. When not screaming he yells
When not screaming, he yells....I assume he's trying to be witty?
Except for the mass of serfs partly concealed behind a gauze curtain the staging is unimagatice >not a typo on my part. That's what it says the acoustics are atrocious and the sets are non existent Again, not a typo. Existent. Oh, and an outrageous lie. Of course there are sets.
Most if not all the blamemust go to Mr Stoppard. Bad lines, boring dialogue, and unimportant concepts trump everything
Although I highly disagree with the review (and I don't specifically trump his observations on Russian history, because it's a subject I'm not familiar with), it's not the review itself with irks me, but his insistence on handing it out to all the patrons attending the performance in hopes of dissuading us from seeing it. It's a pathetic, annoying, and laughable plea for attention.
ETA: I have no doubts that many people will find this play boring. It's certainly not for everyone - if you're not fond of in depth philosophical discussions, maybe it's not for you.
But it IS easy to follow, despite having so many characters. And the Playbill includes a synopsis of both acts, which is more than enough to be able to follow the action.
Updated On: 11/28/06 at 12:30 AM
