Shotgun Players’ “Voyage”: Lighting the fuse
of revolution
Shotgun
Players likes to describe itself as “the biggest little
theatre company in town,” and there’s no doubt that
the company which calls the Ashby Stage home punches far above
its diminutive weight.
Shotgun’s latest coup
is to have secured the rights to Tom Stoppard’s “Coast
of Utopia” trilogy. “Voyage”, the first in the
series, opened on March 14 and has just been extended through
April 29 — and it’s more than worth the price of admission.
Directed by Patrick Dooley,
“Voyage” introduces us to the young, passionate, idealistic
men and women who are as concerned with lighting the fuse of revolution
as the flames of love.
Stoppard’s riff on
pre-revolutionary Russia is mainly set on the estate of a high-ranking
Russian family and proves an entertaining and well-executed journey
through Russian aristocracy and intellectualism.
Dooley says he was eager
to direct Stoppard’s foray into Russian history. “You
can’t help but get swept up in the heady idealism of the
young people engaged in the social, cultural activism that led
up to the Russian Revolution. The subject matter, the language,
the passion in these plays was too much to resist.”
Shotgun plans to mount one
play from the trilogy each year through 2014, and then run the
shows in repertory.
