AP News, February 18th, 2007
The passions of their idealistic youth run up against reality and middle-age for the 19th century revolutionaries and intellectuals in "Salvage," the third chapter of "The Coast of Utopia," Tom Stoppard's masterful trilogy of man's quest for a new and better world.
Rueful resignation isn't as dramatically exciting, so the Lincoln Center Theater production of "Salvage" doesn't have the innate theatricality that propelled "Voyage" and "Shipwreck," the first two-thirds of Stoppard's mammoth work.
Yet that doesn't stop director Jack O'Brien and his amazing company of actors from breathing urgency into the demanding, sometimes dense conversations of these squabbling European firebrands in exile in Victorian England. It's a strange land for most of them, a place where "having one's say isn't grounds for arrest."
As "Salvage" opens, they are a cacophony of voices, a blur of petty jealousies, competing ideologies and just downright eccentricities. It's hard to keep them straight. No wonder the revolution of 1848, which swept Europe, never produced much change.
Fortunately, the play focuses on the hopeful presence of Alexander Herzen, the Russian editor and wealthy benefactor for other radical theorists. As played by the thoughtful and commanding Brian F. O'Byrne, he is the rock who anchors much of the trilogy through its most meandering moments.
Even though he proclaims, at age 40, "I have lost every illusion dear to me," Herzen continues to be optimistic about the future. He's a Slavic Candide, a man who disdains the slash-and-burn tactics of Karl Marx (Adam Dannheisser), author of the Communist Manifesto, and childish anarchist Michael Bakunin (Ethan Hawke). Yet Herzen wants change, too, only without destroying everything in its path.
In "Salvage," Stoppard alternates that political desire for something new with more private upheavals.
When Herzen isn't agitating for freeing the serfs, he is dealing with domestic duties, trying to make sense of his family life after the death of his wife and younger son. He still has three other children to care for and into their orbit comes a stern German governess, played with crisp, Teutonic authority by a marvelous Jennifer Ehle.
His home life also is stirred by his feelings for Natasha Ogarev (Martha Plimpton), second wife of his good friend, poet Nicholas Ogarev (Josh Hamilton). The exuberant Plimpton and the mordant Hamilton deliver finely etched portraits that stand out in this continuous parade of literary and historical characters.
Among the other notable acting turns are Richard Easton as a tottering Polish nobleman and Jason Butler Harner as playwright and novelist Ivan Turgenev.
One of the themes of "Salvage" concerns the passing of the torch _ a transfer of power to a new generation of revolutionaries. It's accomplished with only a twinge of sadness. Stoppard produces a generous coda to all who have gone before. His language is simple, direct and heartbreaking, in startling contrast to many of the intellectually high-wire conversations that pepper the three plays.
"Our meaning is how we live in an imperfect world, in our time. We have no other," Herzen concludes after his arduous search for what he calls "Utopia." His realization precedes one of the play's loveliest images created by the production's twin set designers _ Bob Crowley and Scott Pask. It's a swirling, churning backdrop of water, a reminder that history is forever churning.
All three works _ "Voyage," "Shipwreck" and "Salvage" _ are now running in rep through May 13 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center. Miss them at your peril.
