For the far-right pro-Putin Republican caucus, here’s Patriots, a contemporary drama that ought to offer the misguided Congressional contingent much confirming pleasure. It chronicles the marauding autocrat as he achieves his dictatorial grip. To accomplish such a welcome feat, Peter Morgan – responsible, among other acclaimed works, for the Tony-nominated Frost/Nixon and The Crown — has done it again.
His drama tells the irresistibly jolting tale of Boris Berezovsky (Michael Stuhlbarg), one of Russia’s richest oligarchs, whose holdings included a television station claiming to report truth, automobile businesses through a complicated partnership, and more. During the Boris Yeltsin years, the endlessly ambitious man was responsible for plucking one-time KGB officer Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Will Keen) from obscure bureaucrat to prime minister and then president.
All the while, so-called kingmaker Berezovsky expected to keep his initially reluctant nominee under a firm thumb. As Morgan follows the record, however, that isn’t the way the increasingly assured Putin experiences it. When at a crucial moment, the inflexible mentor reminds his mentee of the chronology, the exchange goes in only rancorous part — Putin: “The fact is I am president?” Berezovsky: “I put you there.” Putin: “That’s opinion. Not fact.”
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The intrepid playwright, it needs be specified, is interested in the gnarled Berezovsky-Putin relationship but not exclusively. He also follows Berezovsky on his parabolic entanglement with devious upstart Roman Abramovich (Luke Thallon), who engineers business deals (automobiles, primarily) that yield millions for both men. That’s until it no longer redounds to Berezovsky’s benefit.
Morgan’s biography goes back to Berezovsky’s childhood, when, nine-years-old, he’s recognized as a mathematics genius by Professor [Grigori] Perelman (Ronald Guttman). But his enthusiasm for Berezovsky’s math career doesn’t stick due to the young man’s business-cum-politics ambition.
Running into irrevocable problems with Putin — who comes to regard the man as an enemy of the state (there is a car bombing from which Berezovsky escapes with burn wounds) — Berezovsky flees Russia in 2000. There, he spends the rest of his life as, he insists, a Russian patriot. Nonetheless, he wrangles with Putin from a distance, hoping to return to the land he loves. Berezovsky dies — hanged, but perhaps not by his own hand — in 2013 at his Ascot, England mansion.
Morgan gets it all in on Miriam Buether’s handsome, multi-leveled set, at the highest rise a double door behind which is a mirror both Berezovsky and Putin use to admire their reflection. Morgan’s enviable way with dialogue is his trick. The primarily contentious duologues Berezovsky holds with Putin, Abramovich and, at first, with doggedly honest security guard and eventual Putin victim Alexander Litvinenko (Alex Hurt) have a reverberatingly authentic ring.
In equally suasive language, Putin explicitly demands that Berezovsky demonstrate loyalty, even as he denies any reason to return loyalty to Berezovsky. Which raises this stateside question: Does the adamant loyalty declaration sound familiar? Does an ex-president now in court come to mind, a man who requires loyalty from those in his circle while not pledged to its return? Does the sequence render Patriots that much more pertinent for today’s American audiences?
Inextricable from the undeniable enterprise’s triumph are the performances of an entire ensemble, Stuhlbarg chief among them. Returning to Broadway after too long an absence while accumulating film and television resumé additions, the exemplary actor, stocky but unrelievedly energetic, rarely allows focus elsewhere when he’s not only in charge but charging. His body so rubbery he sometimes resembles an undulating wave, he’s up and down designer Buether’s many steps indefatigably — the steps possibly symbolic of who outranks whom.
Stuhlbarg’s voice goes on the same play-long charge. To intimidate any of his momentary targets, he might begin a speech with a sultry whisper, then erupt in a torrent of furious emotion. When he’s reminding Putin who put him where he is, he’s in a relentless fury. Throughout, he’s snapping his fingers, slapping his palms, repeatedly holding his arm wide, as if to indicate an easy control of his world.
In a scene where Berezovsky, a Jew and increasingly falling out of favor as such, reckons with Abramovich about their partnerships, he’s suddenly Shylock in The Merchant of Venice Shylock. Instantly, Stuhlbarg’s breadth is demonstrated. Is King Lear next?
Will Keen, who won an Olivier Award for his Almeida and West End Patriots performance, makes what is often termed an auspicious Broadway debut. His resemblance to Putin isn’t entirely his doing, of course, but he makes the most of it. He’s cleverly seen finding Putin’s self-assured stance. He echoes the chilly manner, the cynical smile, the obnoxious pride. One view the audience is denied is a shirtless Putin.
Since Roman Abramovich is not a well-recognized figure here, Thallon has no need to impress as a lookalike, but from his entrance as a nervous young man hoping to obtain Berezovsky’s patronage to his attained oligarchic status, he skillfully completes the play’s threatening triumvirate.
Pulling all this together — with Jack Knowles’ dramatic lighting, Adam Cork’s sound and original music, and Ash J. Woodward’s striking video design — is Rupert Goold. Ever since he startled Manhattan audiences with his 2008 Macbeth, he has never lowered his standards. He has only raised them. Patriots is a new high.
One significant achievement Peter Morgan and Goold attain is putting the word “patriot” under severe scrutiny. The play and production implicitly make the vital point that those who blatantly appropriate “patriot” in self-satisfied promotion are often the least likely worthy of the designation.
Patriots opened April 22, 2024, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and runs through June 23. Tickets and information: patriotsbroadway.com
