You've got to hand it to Sir Tom Stop-pard: he doesn't make things easy for himself. At 65, he has reached an age when most well-established playwrights could be forgiven for lifting the pedal. His near contemporary Harold Pinter, for example, turned to shorter pieces years ago. Not Sir Tom. His latest work must be the most ambitious homegrown opening on the London theatre in ages. For his first production since "The Invention of Love" (1997), he has written in fact not one play but three. His new trilogy under the umbrella title, "The Coast of Utopia", premiered over 12 hours (including two meal breaks) at the National Theatre on August 3rd. A play that swirls with ideas and argument of the kind we have come to expect from Sir Tom, "The Coast of Utopia" makes a pageant of the lives of a stormy group of mid-19th-century Russian radicals whose theories, hopes and quarrels stamped the history of the next 150 years. For their sweep and daring alone, the three plays "Voyage", "Shipwreck" and "Salvage" make a journey well worth taking.
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