The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
"The Coast of Utopia" is a dramatic trilogy by Tom Stoppard that explores the quest for a perfect society through the lives of 19th-century political activists. The title reflects the central theme of searching for an idealized place, despite the irony that a utopia literally means "no place." The trilogy consists of three parts: "Voyage," "Shipwreck," and "Salvage," each representing different phases in the characters' journeys across Europe—specifically Russia, France, Germany, Switzerland, England, and Italy. The narrative intertwines personal stories with political discourse, depicting the intricate relationships and domestic challenges faced by the characters, including the wealthy landowner Alexander Bakunin and revolutionary figures like Alexander Herzen.
The trilogy delves into significant historical and philosophical debates of the time, juxtaposing the complexities of political theory with the realities of family life and love. Stoppard’s work covers the failure of the French Republic in 1848 and the subsequent struggles of the Russian exiles, ultimately leading to a reflection on the evolution of their ideals. Notably, the American premiere of "The Coast of Utopia" in 2006 showcased its ambitious scale, featuring a large cast and elaborate staging, which garnered positive reception for its grand portrayal of these rich historical themes.
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The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First produced: 2002 (first published, 2002)
Type of work: Plays (includes Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage)
The Work
The title The Coast of Utopia derives from the key motivation of almost all of the characters in this dramatic trilogy—the search for a perfect society. Ironically, utopias, as nonexistent (the word literally means “no place”), can have no coast. Yet this truth is repeatedly denied as Stoppard’s huge cast of revolutionaries and fellow travelers (forty-four actors in seventy roles in the New York production) insist that a new secular Eden lies just beyond the horizon, virtually within sight. The main candidates for that paradise are Russia and, briefly, France. The characters’ travels, from Russia to France, Germany, Switzerland, England, and Italy, meld their personal voyages, their political quests, and the coastal metaphor contained in the title of each part of the trilogy: Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage. The political activists expect a triumphant return home after places of temporary exile, mere jumping off points.
Stoppard’s courage in taking on this massive project is noteworthy. Beyond simple cast size, there is no explicit contemporary relevance to the discussion, and much is firmly anchored in nineteenth century political history, primarily the painful attempts to drag Russia into the modern world. The central characters may be unrecognizable by the nonspecialist, and the issues—the relative merits of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling’s theories of reality—can be impenetrable even to the well-read. The Coast of Utopia is not art for art’s sake but is rather political theory for political theory’s sake, an uncompromising eight-hour-plus trek through the intellectual debates and issues of a long-past period. The politics, however, are always conjoined with the domestic lives of the radicals, who have difficult family politics, practicing a clumsy, awkward free love, complicated by a raft of small children running about the stage. Stoppard grounds his political debates in family life and personal relationships, showing how individual personalities shape the debate. The drama lies in the people professing the ideas, not just in the ideas themselves.
Voyage begins in 1833 on the estate of Alexander Bakunin, dramatizing the life of this wealthy landowner, his wife, and four daughters. It features his son, Michael, a willful, restless future radical prominent in the later plays; Alexander Herzen, a more restrained revolutionary and intellectual; Herzen’s childhood friend, Nicholas Ogarev; and their political circle, including the wonderfully drawn Vissarion Belinsky, an impoverished literary critic who insists, almost plausibly, that Russia has no literature. Author Ivan Turgenev appears in all three plays as a foil for the committed revolutionaries, creating art rather than trouble.
Shipwreck moves to Paris, Dresden, and Nice, following Herzen in particular as the other self-exiled Russians swirl around the Herzen family. The failure or “shipwreck” of the French Republic in 1848 is particularly shattering to the radicals, who nevertheless adopt new theories and models for the reform of Russia.
Salvage again features the Herzen household from 1853 to 1865, now in London and Geneva, with Herzen and Ogarev publishing The Bell in Russian and sending this muckraking newspaper to émigré groups and into Russia, even as they are superceded by harder-edged, uncompromising successors.
The American premiere of this trilogy, significantly revised by Stoppard, opened in New York City in 2006 to enthusiastic audiences and positive reviews, especially for its spectacle. Unlike earlier more intimate works, The Coast of Utopia is a grand mural, an opera of ideas, with all the virtues and drawbacks of a very large, ambitious work, one requiring an equally ambitious and expensive staging.
Bibliography
Bareham, T., ed. Tom Stoppard: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Jumpers,” “Travesties,” a Casebook. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1990.
Delaney, Paul. Tom Stoppard: The Moral Vision of the Major Plays. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
Dunkin-Jones, Katherine. “Continental Drift: Katherine Duncan-Jones on How Tom Stoppard’s Study of Philosophy and Revolution Slips Its Moorings.” New Statesman 131 (August 26, 2002): 26-27.
Hitchens, Christopher. “A Nine-Hour Resurrection: Alexander Herzen, Marx’s Rival and Tolstoy’s Nonfiction Counterpart, Enjoys a Well-Deserved Return to Center Stage in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia.” The Atlantic Monthly 290 (December, 2002): 141-146.
Karwowski, Michael. “All Right: An Assessment of Tom Stoppard’s Plays.” Contemporary Review 282 (March, 2003): 161-166.
Kelly, Katherine E. Tom Stoppard and the Craft of Comedy: Medium and Genre at Play. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.
Kelly, Katherine E, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Orlich, Ileana Alexandra. “Tom Stoppard’s Travesties and the Politics of Earnestness.” East European Quarterly 38 (Fall, 2004): 37-49.
Teachout, Terry. “Utopians on Stage.” Commentary 123 (April, 2007): 62-65.
Wolf, Matt, Celia Wren, and Julia Klein. “Unstoppable Stoppard: Utopia Unattainable Is the Topic of His Grand-Scale New Trilogy.” American Theatre 19 (November, 2002): 40-43.