Part One � Voyage

Lincoln Center Theater has announced that the opening night of Voyage, the first part of its new production of Tom Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia, has been rescheduled to 27 Nov. This first installment of Stoppard's trilogy was originally scheduled to open on 5 Nov 2006.

The change in the opening night date is necessitated to allow leading cast member Richard Easton, who plays Russian landowner Alexander Bakunin, the appropriate amount of time to recover from a procedure he received earlier this week to correct a heart arrhythmia.

Mr. Easton, who played the first preview of the production on Tuesday, October 17, became ill during the following night's performance. He is expected to return to the production within the next two weeks. His understudy, David Manis, has been performing the role of Alexander Bakunin since 19 Oct 2006 and will continue in that role until Mr. Easton's return.

The schedule for the second and third parts of The Coast of Utopia will remain unchanged.

The trilogy stars Brian F. O'Byrne (Alexander Herzen), Billy Crudup (Vissarion Belinsky ), Josh Hamilton (Nicholas Ogarev), Ethan Hawke (Michael Bakunin), Jason Butler Harner (Ivan Turgenev), Amy Irving (Varvara Bakunin / Maria Ogarev), Jennifer Ehle (Liubov Bakunin/Natalie Herzen/Malwida von Meysenbug), David Harbour (Nicholas Stankevich/George Herwegh/Doctor), and Martha Plimpton (Varenka Bakunin/Natasha Tuchkov/ Natasha Ogarev).

Beginning in mid-19th century Russia during the repressive reign of Tsar Nicholas I, the play spans a period of thirty years as it tells the story of a group of Russian intellectuals, headed by the radical theorist and editor Alexander Herzen, the novelist Ivan Turgenev, the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky and the aristocrat-turned-anarchist Michael Bakunin, 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.

The action of The Coast of Utopia, which had its world premiere at London's National Theatre in 2002, 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.

Lincoln Center Theater will mount the three parts of The Coast of Utopia individually, performing each part in turn as the next opens.

During the final three and one-half weeks of the production's run audiences will have the opportunity to see all three parts in succession. And on three Saturdays - 24 Feb 2007, 3 Mar 2007 and 10 Mar 2007 � theatergoers will be able to see all three - Voyage, Shipwreck and Salvage - in one-day marathons beginning at 11am.

The schedule for The Coast of Utopia is:

• Part One � Voyage
  Previews: Tue 17 Oct 2006
  Opens: Sun 27 Nov 2006
• Part Two � Shipwreck
  Previews: Tue 5 Dec 2006
  Opens: Thu 21 Dec 2006
• Part Three � Salvage
  Previews: Tue 30 Jan 2007
  Opens: Thu 15 Feb 2007