About the Play:

The Coast of Utopia is a three-part play by Tom Stoppard devoted to an excitable Russian intelligentsia in 19th-century Czarist Russia. The three sequential plays – Voyage, Shipwreck and Salvage – tell an epic story of romantics and revolutionaries caught up in the struggle for political freedom in Tsarist Russia, beginning in the reign of Nicholas I, a ruler noted for his repressive attitude to politics and intellectual freedom. The Coast of Utopia presents an inspired examination of the struggle between romantic anarchy, Utopian idealism and practical reformation.

The Coast of Utopia is monumental trilogy of three sequential plays that explore a group of friends for whom the term "intelligentsia" was coined. Beginning in mid-19th century Russia during the repressive reign of Tsar Nicholas I, this sweeping epic spans a period of thirty years as it tells the panoramic story of a group of Russian intellectuals 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. Among them are the anarchist Michael Bakunin, who was to challenge Marx for the soul of the masses; the novelist Ivan Turgenev, author of some of the most enduring works in Russian literature; the brilliant, erratic young literary critic Vissarion Belinsky; the poet Nicholas Ogarev; the aristocrat-turned-anarchist Michael Bakunin; and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and the first self-proclaimed socialist in Russia, who becomes the main focus of this drama of politics, love, loss and betrayal. The action of The Coast of Utopia 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.

The Coast of Utopia premiered in 2002 and was was a hit at London's National Theatre. The American premiere, which was performed by a company of 44 actors, was in 2006 at the Lincoln Center Theater in New York City and the celebrated run won the Tony Award on Broadway – the award cited all three parts – in 2007.

What people say:

"Exhilarating! Pulses with the dizzying, arrogance and anxiety of a new generation moving as fast as it can." — New York Times

"Broadway will struggle during this and possibly many other seasons to come up with an event to top this rich and highly literate drama." — Variety

"Unforgettable and unmissable! An experience of life as much as an experience of art." — New York Post

About the Playwright:

Sir Tom Stoppard (1937-2025) was a British playwright often hailed as among the greatest of his generation. Born Tomáš Sträussler in what was then Czechoslovakia, the family fled at the onset of the Nazi invasion finally settling in England when he was eight, and Stoppard adopted the last name of his stepfather. He was catapulted into the front ranks of modern playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967. He wrote prolifically for TV, radio, and stage in a career that spanned six decades and also included a parallel career as a Hollywood script doctor, much in demand to provide dialogue to others' film scripts, and shared a best-screenplay Oscar for his contribution to Shakespeare in Love. He was knighted in 1997 and became one of the most honoured dramatists in British theatre.