Shipwreck ( Coast of Utopia-2)

I would like to thank, first, Aileen Kelly, who has written extensively about Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin. I am indebted to her for her kindness as well as her scholarship. Moreover, Dr Kelly is, with Henry Hardy, who also has my gratitude for our exchanges, the coeditor of the book which was my entry to the world of The Coast of Utopia, namely Russian Thinkers, a selection of essays by Isaiah Berlin. Berlin is one of two authors without whom I could not have written these plays, the other being E. H. Carr, whose The Romantic Exiles is in print again after nearly seventy years, and whose biography of Bakunin deserves to be. I received valuable help from Helen Rappaport on Russian matters in general. I am particularly indebted to her for Russian translation, including lines of dialogue. Krista Jussenhoven kindly made up for my deficiency in German, Rose Cobbe corrected my French, and Sonja Nerdrum supplied me with the lines in Italian. My thanks to all of them, and to the Royal National Institute for the Deaf for access to its library.

Shipwreck was first performed in the Olivier Auditorium of the National Theatre, London, as the second part of The Coast of Utopia trilogy, on 8 July 2002. The cast was as follows:

NICHOLAS OGAREV   Simon Day

NATALIE HERZEN   Eve Best

IVAN TURGENEV   Guy Henry

SASHA HERZEN   Lewis Crutch/Freddie Hale/Thomas Moll/Greg Sheffield

NURSE   Janet Spencer-Turner

ALEXANDER HERZEN   Stephen Dillane

TIMOTHY GRANOVSKY   Iain Mitchell

NICHOLAS KETSCHER   Paul Ritter

KONSTANTIN AKSAKOV   Sam Troughton

POLICEMAN   Richard Hollis

VISSARION BELINSKY   Will Keen

MADAME HAAG   Janine Duvitski

KOLYA HERZEN   Padraig Goodall/Matthew Thomas-Davies/David Perkins

GEORGE HERWEGH   Raymond Coulthard

EMMA HERWEGH   Charlotte Emmerson

NICHOLAS SAZONOV   Jonathan Slinger

JEAN-MARIE   Thomas Arnold

MICHAEL BAKUNIN   Douglas Henshall

KARL MARX   Paul Ritter

SHOP BOY   Dominic Barklem/Alexander Green/William Green/Ashley Jones

NATALIE (NATASHA) TUCHKOV   Lucy Whybrow

BENOIT   Martin Chamberlain

BLUE BLOUSE   John Nolan

MARIA OGAREV   Felicity Dean

FRANZ OTTO   Paul Ritter

ROCCA   Jack James

TATA HERZEN   Clemmie Hooton/Alice Knight/Harriet Lunnon/Casi Toy

MARIA FOMM   Anna Maxwell Martin

LEONTY IBAYEV   John Carlisle

Other parts played by Rachel Ferjani, Jasmine Hyde, Sarah Manton, Jennifer Scott Malden, Nick Sampson, Kemal Sylvester, David Verrey

Director   Trevor Nunn

Set, Costume and Video Designer   William Dudley

Lighting Designer   David Hersey

Associate Director   Stephen Rayne

Music   Steven Edis

Movement Director   David Bolger

Sound Designer   Paul Groothuis

Company Voice Work   Patsy Rodenburg

CHARACTERS

ALEXANDER HERZEN,a radical writer

NATALIE HERZEN,Alexander’s wife

TATA HERZEN,the Herzens’ daughter

SASHA HERZEN,the Herzens’ son

KOLYA HERZEN,the Herzens’ younger son

NICHOLAS OGAREV,a poet and radical

IVAN TURGENEV,a poet and writer

TIMOTHY GRANOVSKY,a historian

NICHOLAS KETSCHER,a doctor

KONSTANTIN AKSAKOV,a Slavophile

NURSE,a household serf

POLICEMAN

VISSARION BELINSKY,a literary critic

GEORGE HERWEGH,a radical poet

EMMA HERWEGH,his Wife

MADAME HAAG,Herzen’s mother

NICHOLAS SAZONOV,a Russian émigré

MICHAEL BAKUNIN,a Russian émigré activist

JEAN-MARIE,a French servant

KARL MARX,author of The Communist Manifesto

SHOP BOY

NATALIE (NATASHA) TUCHKOV,Natalie’s friend

BENOIT,a French servant

BLUE BLOUSE,a Paris worker

MARIA OGAREV,Ogarev’s estranged wife

FRANZ OTTO,Bakunin’s defence lawyer

ROCCA,an Italian servant

MARIA FOMM,a German nanny

LEONTY IBAYEV,Russian Consul in Nice

The action takes place between 1846 and 1852

at Sokolovo, a gentleman’s estate fifteen miles

outside Moscow; Salzbrunn, Germany;

Paris; Dresden; and Nice

Shipwreck

ACT ONE

SUMMER 1846