Ben Brantley of The New York Times hailed Voyage, Part 1, as "an exhilarating production performed with freshness and vigor by an immense and starry cast." Newsweek called Voyage "complex, funny and heartbreaking" while David Cote of NY-1/Time Out New York declared it "Stoppard's crowning achievement."
In the mid-19th century as revolution swept across Europe, a group of Russian intellectuals, journalists, critics, philosophers, poets and their friends tried to topple the tsar for the cause of freedom. Stoppard's epic follows these men and women over thirty years, as their intertwined lives, passions and dreams drive them in pursuit of perfection.
The first part of the trilogy, VOYAGE, is Stoppard's nod to Chekhov set at the grand Russian countryside estate of the Bakunin family. Four eligible sisters are under the sway of their charismatic brother, Michael, who interferes in their lives, while fervently seeking a greater purpose in his own. As his political and philosophical journey unfolds, Bakunin's compatriots will include Vissarion Belinsky, George Herwegh, Karl Marx, Nicholas Ogarev, Nicholas Stankevich, Ivan Turgenev and, of particular note, the visionary leader Alexander Herzen.
