Voyage by Tom Stoppard

First reading of Stoppard's new trilogy

Douglas Henshal as Bakunin in the National Theatre production, photo by Ivan Kyncl

I read Voyage , by Tom Stoppard yesterday. It is the first play in his trilogy The Coast of Utopia . Stoppard's plays always make you feel a bit stupid, because they draw on so much intellectual and historical detail. Even though they work perfectly well when you know little of the background, you know that if you just knew a lot more you would be getting so much more out of it.
In Voyage, the intellectual life of mid 19th century Russians are the homework - Mikhail Bakunin and Ivan Turgenyev are characters. Bakunin I really know nothing of, though I have read Turgenyev's play A Month in the Country and saw a terrific production of it once in London that had Helen Mirren in the cast. Stoppard's plays often use other plays in their plots, and this one seems to have echoes of Chekhov . It centers - Like Three Sisters - on a provincial family. In Voyage, it is the Bakunin family of four sisters and their brother who are entwined in the intellectual life of 19th century Russian dissidents. There are also echoes of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard in the sound effects - Chekhov has an otherworldly sound that is evocative of the passing of the old era of aristocrats who live on the land and the coming of the new era of money, capitalism and socialism . In Voyage, there is an off-stage otherworldly gunshot that is evocative of Pushkin's death in a duel. I will have more to say about this fascinating play as I read the rest of the trilogy and learn more about the world it describes. The Complete Review has an excellent set of links, which I copy below:

Voyage:

• Faber publicity page

• Grove publicity page

• National Theatre production

• The Forgotten Revolutionary - Tom Stoppard previews his new trilogy in The Observer

• Interview in the Daily Telegraph
Reviews:

• Aisle Say

• American Theatre

• The Atlantic Monthly

• BBC Newsnight

• The British Theatre Guide

• CurtainUp

• Daily Telegraph