Even the poisoning of whistleblowing FSB officer Alexander Litvineko - during which we hear the harrowing groans of the dying man - ends up being cheapened by the contrived appearance of Litvinenko’s white-clad ghost in the final scene. The play is book-ended by a soliloquy from Berezovsky about how the West sees only Russia’s hardship and cruelty when really it is “picking mushrooms in the forest,” “laughter in the bathhouse,” and being “wrapped up against the cold in a shapka ushanka.” The saccharine pathos in these lines, combined with the cliches, allows the audience to fall back on comfortable preconceptions of Russia rather than forcing them to confront the horrifying reality of what it is doing in the world beyond the theater walls. These cliches did not seem to trouble the audience, whose chatter in the interval and on the street afterwards was largely positive. The aggressively red set, Katya Berezovsky’s ringtone being a tinny rendition of the Russian national anthem, and indulgent musings about the so-called ‘Russian soul’ amount to a picture of Russia as Western audiences are accustomed to seeing it. This tired quip was one of several eye-roll moments that prevented the play from being the searing new portrait of Russia that Morgan seems to have set out to paint. “What do you mean, you won’t take a bribe?” Berezovsky demands of a Putin, when the latter is still working for St. Patriots is not a fundamentally bad play - the action is fast-paced and there is a healthy smattering of insightful remarks about Russia’s trajectory post-1991 - but ultimately falls prey to stereotype. The staging is centered on a prominent T-shaped platform that is often illuminated red. The set and lighting, designed by Miriam Buether, Deborah Andrews, and Jack Knowles, is flashy, with significant use of projections and dramatic shifts from light to dark. Boris Yeltsin and his daughter Tatyana are among the famous figures who make cameo appearances. “Patriots” has a large but under-utilized cast of sixteen, with most of the actors - except for Hollander, Keen, Luke Thallon (who plays Roman Abramovich), Josef Davies (who plays Alexander Litvinenko), and Ronald Guttman - playing multiple characters. Both men, the play tells us, are motivated by what they consider patriotism although, in both cases, this sentiment is inseparable from the personal desire for power. In Act II, Putin is the president and Berezovsky is exiled. The play hinges on the reversal of a power dynamic: In Act I, Berezovsky holds the power and Putin is merely a relatively low-ranking official. The play begins in Russia with Berezovsky at the height of his power in the 1990s and ends with his mysterious death in London in 2013. The play’s title, “Patriots,” refers to its driving dramatic question: Is Berezovsky motivated by a genuine desire to reform Russia or pure self-interest? The plural in the title alludes to play’s other central character, Vladimir Putin, who is played with eerie physical accuracy by Will Keen (“The Crown,” “Wolf Hall”). Critics believe a Broadway run is in the offing.
#Microcosm vs mood tv#
Berezovsky is played by British TV and theater veteran Tom Hollander (“The White Lotus,” “The Night Manager”). Written as a drama, though peppered with dry British humor, it premiered at the Almeida Theatre in Islington in July 2022 and then transferred to the West End in June of this year for a twelve-week run. The two-act play was scripted by Peter Morgan, the writer behind Netflix’s “The Crown,” and directed by Rupert Goold. It was called a “cooly unnerving new drama” that would paint a chilling portrait of today’s Russia, with stars backstage and on stage.
The signs hanging from the marquee seemed to suggest the play’s relevance for today. What does it mean to stage a play in the West about Russia when it is waging a genocidal war in Ukraine? The attack could not help but inform my perception of “Patriots” that day, but on any day Russia’s war against Ukraine has been the elephant in the theater hall throughout its run.
On the day I went to see “Patriots,” a play about the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a Russian missile struck the Chernihiv Drama Theater, killing seven and injuring 156 more.
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