Word: bakunin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...early word on "The Coast of Utopia" was daunting: a nine-hour political debate, freely adapted from Isaiah Berlin's book of essay on "Russian Thinkers." Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Chaadaev, Nicholas Ogarev: discuss their theories of social progress. Anyone? Anyone? Before seeing the plays I boned up on 19th century Russian radicals by reading the fact-packed 88-page program; by the time the lights went down Saturday morning, I felt ready to be a contestant on "Masterminds." Only with Stoppard does the theatergoer have to cram for a show...
...with women, the women play their ace: they say, as Molly Bloom did, "Yes." This is the last word of the first and third "Utopia" plays; in each case it is spoken indulgently, as a mother would to calm a child's questing, questioning spirit. The political theories of Bakunin, Herzen and their coteries were expressions of a dream for universal betterment. As Shaw and Stoppard know, men are the dreamers, women the realists. Women are the land men return to when Utopia has faded or their ship foundered...