Mapping Utopia Peasant Dress

THEATRE Copyright Lighting&Sound America March 2007 www.lightingandsoundamerica.com he lights fade, and the darkly highly susceptible to Western European ideas in alluring music begins. A “sea” of politics and art. Naïve, yet sophisticated; well- China silk engulfs the stage. read yet untutored in the world, they want to T Behind a scrim, the actor Brian F. change the course of history; history, however, O’Byrne, seated in a chair and has its own plans for them. pensively handling a child’s glove, rises above The action is sprawling, the set’s turntable the waves. After a moment, he sinks down into spinning Stoppard’s characters across countries the turbulent “waters.” The upstage scrim rises and decades to meet unforeseen destinies. It’s and the silk waves recede. A full stage wash a long, eventful voyage, riddled with ironies as reveals what appear to hundreds of people in dreams of radical social change give way to Mapping Utopia peasant dress. The majority of them are imprisonment and exile, friendships and mannequins, yet there is a burst of movement marriages end in betrayal and tragedy, and the as, out of this fixed tableau, more than three world turns in ways that nobody could possibly dozen actors sweep downstage. expect. The final scene encapsulates, in a single Tom Stoppard’s breathtaking trilogy is brought to life by a vast— It’s as if you’re watching the birth of the image, the turbulence and tragedy that has world, and so you are: Tom Stoppard’s trilogy, defined the lives of these men. The Coast of Utopia, brings to life mid-19th- The Coast of Utopia was first produced at and vastly talented—team of designers and technicians. century Europe in all its political and London’s National Theatre in 2002 in a philosophical turmoil. The action of the plays production staged by Trevor Nunn with a covers 30 years, beginning in Moscow and production design by Bill Dudley and lighting by By: David Barbour spreading across the Continent; it’s a story of a David Hersey. (As reported in the January 2006 handful of youthful idealists who alter the issue, Dudley’s design provided Andrew Lloyd intellectual and political map of their world, Webber with crucial inspiration for his musical often in ways they never intended. The Woman in White, which, like Utopia’s Throughout, the focus is on six Russians, London production, made extensive use of who, as students, vow to avenge the wide-screen projections.) Given the logistical Decembrists, the reformed-minded youth of a complexities—each play runs close to three previous generation who challenged the power hours, there are dozens of speaking roles, the of the Tsar. They are Michael Bakunin (Ethan material is relatively obscure—it seemed Hawke), who circles the globe pursuing a dream impossible that an American theatre company of anarchy; Alexander Herzen (the trilogy’s would take on the task of producing it. protagonist, played by O’Byrne), whose writings However, Lincoln Center Theatre has taken spread the gospel of socialism across Europe, the risk, in an epic staging by Jack O’Brien. sometimes with devastating consequences; the From the first preview, it instantly became the critic Vissarion Belinsky (Billy Crudup), dead season’s top talking point. Soon after the first before he can see his dream of a native Russian production, Voyage, opened, the original literature fully realized; Nicholas Stankevich engagement was extended by two months. (David Harbour), Herzen’s great friend, who, like Since then, New York Post columnist Michael Belinsky, will be felled by consumption; the poet Riedel has pronounced it the hottest ticket in Nicholas Ogarev (Josh Hamilton), whose career town. According to The New York Times, copies devolves into a series of tangled, scandalous of Isaiah Berlin’s Russian Thinkers, one of affairs; and Ivan Turgenev (Jason Butler Harner), Stoppard’s key research texts, have sold out in whose devotion to art, not politics, causes him the Tristate Area. Utopia has become such an to be vilified by friends and foes alike. unstoppable cultural phenomenon that, when The six young men are very different, yet the inevitable backlash occurred, contrarian they’re appalled at the medieval nature of critic Charles Isherwood almost apologized for Russian society—its absolute monarchy, it, with a headline in the Sunday Times that serfdom, and lack of indigenous high culture. stated, “The Coast of Utopia is a Bore. There. I Most of them are besotted by German Said It.” Romanticism in philosophy and literature, and For most theatregoers, the breadth of Stoppard’s vision; his elegant, lucid text; the The set of Shipwreck is dominated by an upstage performances of an enormous and pile of detritus, objects taken from the first two accomplished cast (including Jennifer Ehle, plays. Katz’s lighting carefully carves out the objects Martha Plimpton, Richard Easton, and Amy 52 • March 2007 • Lighting&Sound America www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • March 2007 • 53 THEATRE Left: The final tableau shows the characters against a drop taken from the painting The continuous piece. In fact, it’s more Russia. The moment is right, as that suggests theory means nothing. The smart Ninth Wave. Opposite: Much of Shipwreck is like a symphony in three change is in the air: the repressive thing is to conclude that the design is the set in Paris. movements.” Tsar Alexander dies and the serfs result of both men. Rick Mone, project O’Brien is probably correct; each are emancipated. Once again, manager at Hudson Scenic, one of several other commitments. I was out of town, play contains new locations, however profound social change is scenic houses involved, says, “When it was doing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Ken dramatic actions, and shifts of tone. deferred. Meanwhile, Herzen presented at the bid session, most of the Posner, who’s a friend of Brian’s. I told Voyage, the opener, takes place at becomes involved in an open affair available detail had to do with Voyage and him about the project; he said, ‘I’d kill to Premukhino, the Bakunin family with Natasha Ogarev, the wife of Shipwreck. We’d be told, ‘This is Bob’s idea’ or do it.’ But he couldn’t do all of it, either. estate, and in Moscow and St. Nicholas; the latter responds by ‘This is Scott’s.’” As time went on, we’d ask, ‘Is Meanwhile, Crowley was working with Petersburg; it introduces most of the taking a London prostitute as his this a Bob or a Scott idea?’ and either nobody Natasha Katz [on Tarzan].” The decision main characters, contrasting the mistress. The Bell’s initial success knew or it didn’t matter.” was made to hire one designer per play. intellectual ferment in the cities with fades as a new generation The tasks of coordinating the work of the As McDevitt notes, Lincoln Center the complicated emotional embraces nihilism and violent designers and keeping the project in forward Theatre is a not-for-profit organization arrangements—marriages, divorces, change, forcing the now middle- motion fell to associate scenic designer Frank and real-life calculations had to be and romances—in the country. It aged Herzen to realize that he and McCullough, who says the designers worked made. “For me to do a LORT show is a establishes the luxuriously bourgeois his friends have been supplanted by fruitfully in tag-team fashion: “I would have kind of a break-even situation,” he says, way of life that will soon be a new ideas. Looming on the horizon been very lonely with just one designer. Scott “and that was the case for everybody. memory for many of them. We also is Karl Marx, who will set the agenda was back and forth to London working on Plus the logistics were so huge—Bob see how the young men’s for the revolutions to come. The play other projects and so was Bob. With all of the Crowley looked at it, and said, ‘How can fascination with German Romantic ends in Geneva, with Herzen, goings-around, one of them was always I do this and stage Tarzan in Holland philosophy gives way to doctrines of Bakunin (finally freed from prison), reachable.” (Everyone agrees that McCullough ALL PHOTOS, EXCEPT WHERE NOTED: PAUL KOLNIK [which he did this year]?’ But Jack social action—expressed in the and Ogarev, now old men, and associate lighting designer Aaron Spivey O’Brien, man—he puts these things desire for revolution and/or anarchy. contemplating the powerful tides of played crucial roles, from conception to In Shipwreck, the focus shifts to history and reversals of fortune that completion, as the designers came and went.) Irving); and an absolutely stunning Only, and The Pirate Queen. (This is together. Who would have thought Billy Herzen, who will dominate the rest have brought them to this place. Each of the three big ideas mentioned by production design are bounty a partial list.) The answer begins Crudup and Ethan Hawke could take a of the story. Exiled from Russia, he Staging Utopia was bound to be enough. In a theatre scene that with Jack O’Brien. year off from their movie schedules?” heads to Paris with his wife Natalie an enormous task, O’Brien seems increasingly focused on the If it’s not already clear by now, let us and their children. Initially thrilled by reasoned—why not supersize the minimal, both in terms of ideas and Assembling the team state for the record that the careers of the Paris Revolution of 1848 (which creative team? “I’m the president of production values, The Coast of Once Jack O’Brien decided to stage all involved are deeply intertwined.

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