Richard Easton Returns to Coast of Utopia

By Andrew Gans
November 13, 2006

Richard Easton, the Tony-winning actor who became ill during the Oct. 18 preview of The Coast of Utopia, recently returned to the production at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.

A Lincoln Center Theater spokesperson told Playbill.com that Easton rejoined the Tom Stoppard play Nov. 11. As previously reported, Tom Stoppard’s Utopia rescheduled its official opening night to Nov. 27 to accommodate Easton's recovery. According to a recent press release, the opening night — originally set for Nov. 5 — was changed to "allow leading cast member [Easton], who plays Russian landowner Alexander Bakunin, the appropriate amount of time to recover from a procedure he received earlier this week to correct a heart arrhythmia."

The Coast of Utopia, which boasts a cast of 44, also stars Billy Crudup, Jennifer Ehle, Josh Hamilton, David Harbour, Jason Butler Harner, Ethan Hawke, Amy Irving, Brían F. O'Byrne and Martha Plimpton.

The Coast of Utopia is centered on the political and philosophical idealism and debates of mid-19th-century Russia, examining the movements that excited artists and thinkers in those days. The show moves chronologically on from the 1830s, when the great Romantic poet Pushkin was still alive and his epic poem "Eugene Onegin" was all the rage in educated circles.

Jack O'Brien, the Broadway director of Hairspray, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Henry IV and The Invention of Love, helms the New York bow of the nine-hour Coast of Utopia triptych.