The Coast of Utopia: Salvage

by Tom Stoppard

The Coast of Utopia comprises three sequential but self-contained plays, Voyage, Shipwreck and Salvage. They tell an epic story of romantics and revolutionaries caught up in the struggle for political freedom in an age of emperors.

Set in the mid-19th century in Russia and Europe, the trilogy follows a group of friends who come of age under the Tsarist autocracy of Nicholas I.
Among them are the idealist and anarchist Michael Bakunin who was to challenge Marx for the soul of the masses; Ivan Turgenev, author of some of the most enduring works in Russian literature; the brilliant, erratic young critic Vissarion Belinsky; and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and the first self-proclaimed socialist in Russian history, who becomes the main focus of a drama of politics, love, loss and betrayal.

The action takes place between 1853 and 1865 in London and Switzerland.

The Coast of Utopia: Salvage finished on: 23 November 2002