Tony Award-winner Richard Easton is in stable condition after having collapsed onstage last night during a preview performance of the Tom Stoppard play Voyage, part of Lincoln Center Theatre's 3-part epic The Coast of Utopia.
Easton did not have a heart attack, but is currently in the hospital having tests. Understudy David Manis will perform Easton's roles until the actor returns, according to LCT press representative Barbara Carroll.Easton is a Tony Award-winner for his performance in Stoppard's The Invention of Love, while his many other Broadway credits include The Rivals, Henry IV, Noises Off, Hamlet, Exit the King, The School for Scandal, and The Cherry Orchard.Voyage began previews on October 17th and opens on November 5th at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.
Billy Crudup,Jennifer Ehle, Josh Hamilton, David Harbour, Jason Butler Harner, Ethan Hawke, Amy Irving, Brían F. O'Byrne and Martha Plimpton also lead 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.