'The Coast of Utopia: Voyage' review: bold launch Theater review

Alexander Herzen (Patrick Jones, right) discusses philosophy with Nicholas Sankevich (Adrian Anchondo) in Shotgun Players' regional premiere of Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia: Voyage" Alexander Herzen (Patrick Jones, right) discusses philosophy with Nicholas Sankevich (Adrian Anchondo) in Shotgun Players' regional premiere of Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia: Voyage" Photo: Pak Han Photo: Pak Han Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 'The Coast of Utopia: Voyage' review: bold launch 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

It takes a while for "Voyage," the first part of Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia" trilogy, to set sail in the Shotgun Players' West Coast premiere that opened Friday. But the revolution wasn't built in a day. By the time you've sorted out a Russian novel's worth of characters and become invested in some of them, it may feel as if the trip is ending too soon.

That's an unusual thing to say about a 2 1/2-hour drama, but it's a testament to the ambitions of Shotgun's 21st season opener. "Voyage" isn't just a large-cast (21), time-sprawling (11 years) epic. It's the first stage in Shotgun's three-year trip through the trilogy - the 2002 London and '06 Broadway sensation - culminating in 2014 with marathon stagings of all three plays.

That can make much of "Voyage" seem like a complex intro to Stoppard's heady, evocative tour of the earliest seeds of the Russian Revolution. The trilogy covers the years 1833-66, and, though "Voyage" ends in '44, two of the principal characters - Alexander Herzen, the father of socialism, and literary giant Ivan Turgenev - don't show up until late in the game. "Voyage" focuses on Michael Bakunin, well before he became the fiery prophet of anarchism.

But even if it can be confusing at times, frustrating at others - we have to wait a year to see what happens next? - and seems diminished on Shotgun's Ashby Stage, it's a voyage worth taking. As it progresses, the play more than sets the context for what's to come. It draws us into a world of feudal comfort, suffering serfs and intellectual ferment chafing under heavy-handed, paranoid censorship and the tsar's secret police.

And love. The first act takes place on the rural Bakunin estate, where the patriarch (an amiably pompous John Mercer), who prides himself on his liberalism, and his watchful wife (a sharp Zehra Berkman) worry over the marital prospects of their four daughters. With good reason. Their pampered son Michael (Joseph Salazar) is not only blowing off his military career but making his sisters dissatisfied with their suitors.

Meanwhile, Salazar's whirlwind of a self-obsessed young Bakunin, basking in his sisters' adulation, is more excited about his great ideas - which progress from Friedrich Schelling through Hegel in spurts of epiphanies. The second act transfers the intense battles of ideas to Moscow, backtracking through the same years.

At times, director Patrick Dooley and his cast - including Salazar and Nick Medina as the fervent, awkward revolutionary literary critic Belinsky - are better at expressing the passion of the philosophical apostles than their ideas. Patrick Jones' solid, intense and articulate young Herzen and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's casually bright, romantic Turgenev add considerable depth and immediacy to the intellectual drama. So does a smitten Caitlyn Louchard in the way she hangs on the young men's words.

Anne Hallinan, Britney Frazier and Alex Shafer capably represent the world of serfs and dispossessed, though Dooley's stagings still seem underpopulated, cramped and less varied than desirable. The metal frame for Nina Ball's spare settings looks designed for more scene changes than we see. But this is the beginning of a long journey. Shotgun has a reputation for shows that improve considerably during their runs. This "Voyage" has only just begun.