Photo Flash: Tom Stoppard and Coast of Utopia Actors

Rehearsals are currently underway for the Lincoln Center Theatre production of Tom Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia.  The three-part production, to be directed by Tony Award-winner Jack O'Brien, will begin performances Tuesday, October 17 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65 Street).

Billy Crudup, Richard Easton, Jennifer Ehle, Josh Hamilton, David Harbour, Jason Butler Harner, Ethan Hawke, Amy Irving, Brían F. O'Byrne and Martha Plimpton had a cast of 44.  "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 (to be played by Brían F. O'Byrne) , the novelist Ivan Turgenev (Jason Butler Harner), the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky (Billy Crudup) and the aristocrat-turned-anarchist Michael Bakunin (Ethan Hawke), 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," according to LCT notes.

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.  Lincoln Center Theater will mount 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 three Saturdays -- February 24, March 3 and March 10 – theatergoers will be able to see all three - Voyage, Shipwreck and Salvage -  in one-day marathons beginning at 11am.

Visit www.lincolncenter.org for tickets and more information.

Photo by Paul Kolnik