Crudup, Easton, Ehle, Hamilton, Harbour, Hawke, O’Byrne, Plimpton Set for The Coast of Utopia

Billy Crudup, Richard Easton, Jennifer Ehle, Josh Hamilton, David Harbour, Ethan Hawke, Brían F. O’Byrne, and Martha Plimpton will star in Lincoln Center Theater’s production of Tom Stoppard’s award-winning trilogy of plays The Coast of Utopia, which will play the Vivian Beaumont Theater, October 17-March 11.

Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien will direct the production, which will feature over 30 actors playing 70 roles. It will have sets by Bob Crowley and Scott Pask, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Natasha Katz, Brian MacDevitt, and Kenneth Posner, and original music and sound design by Mark Bennett. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

The first part of the trilogy, entilted Voyage, will start performances on October 17; the sceond part, Shipwreck, begins on November 5; and the last part, Salvage, will begin its run on January 30. During the final three and one-half weeks of the production’s run, audiences will have the opportunity to see all three parts of the trilogy in successive performances. In addition, on three Saturdays — February 24, March 3, and March 10 — theatergoers will be able to see all three parts in one-day marathons beginning at 11am.

Beginning in mid-19th century Russia during the repressive reign of Tsar Nicholas I, the action of the play spans a period of 30 years. It tells the panoramic story of a group of Russian intellectuals headed by the radical theorist and editor Alexander Herzen (O’Byrne), the novelist Ivan Turgenev (still to be cast), the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky (Crudup), the aristocrat-turned-anarchist Michael Bakunin (Hawke), and the poet Nicholas Ogarev (Hamilton) 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.

Crudup received Tony Award nominations for The Pillowman and The Elephant Man. Easton won the Tony Award for LCT’s production of Stoppard’s The Invention of Love and was seen at the Beaumont in Henry IV and The Rivals. Ehle won a Tony Award for the revival of The Real Thing and is currently playing Lady Macbeth in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Macbeth. Hamilton received a Drama Desk nomination for his work in the New Group’s production of Hurlyburly. Harbour received a Tony nomination for the recent revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Hawke starred as Hotspur in LCT’s Henry IV and co-starred with Hamilton in Hurlyburly. O’Byrne, a Tony winner for Frozen, and Plimpton are currently co-starring on Broadway in Shining City.