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    ‘Patriots’ Review: What Happened to the Man Who Made Putin?

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    Michael Stuhlbarg and Will Keen shine as a kingmaker and his creature. But in Peter Morgan’s cheesy-fun play, it’s not always clear which is which.“In the West you have no idea.”So begins Peter Morgan’s play “Patriots,” which opened on Monday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The line is spoken by the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, referring to the foods, sights and music that supposedly feed the great Russian soul. These are represented, in Rupert Goold’s entertaining if overcaffeinated production, by boozy singing and balalaikas, sometimes even fur hats.But “Patriots” also sets out to demonstrate how little the West knows about the real world of realpolitik: the grudges, enmities and insulted dignities that in the post-Soviet 1990s, with casino capitalism rampant in Russia, created Vladimir Putin.If you could ask Berezovsky, though, he’d tell you it was he who created Putin, a tenth-rate provincial nobody he eased into power, first as prime minister and later as president. Berezovsky (Michael Stuhlbarg) calls himself Putin’s “krysha” — literally his roof, figuratively his protector or, as he explains, the “bully on your side.”Spoken in the weirdly accented English of this production, which originated in London and has been remounted for Broadway with key cast changes and Netflix as a producer, “krysha” sounds confusingly like “creature.” It turns out to be a useful confusion. “Patriots” is a wild story of makers switching places with the made, of Pinocchios devouring Geppettos.Putin (Will Keen) was and is both: a liar and a manipulator. Berezovsky (Michael Stuhlbarg) was at least the latter — but, well, in the West we have no idea. We meet him in “Patriots” as a 9-year-old math prodigy, an obnoxious “golden child” fixated on winning a Nobel Prize. (That there is no Nobel in mathematics is one of Morgan’s many shortcuts.) The boy’s interests, at least as selected for ironic reference later, are in the predictability of decision making, under rational and even irrational circumstances.Keen, left, as Putin and Michael Stuhlbarg as Boris Berezovsky bring physical, gestural and emotional life to characters who might seem to have no insides worth exploring, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Peter Morgan Turns His Pen From ‘The Crown’ to the Kremlin

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      His new play “Patriots,” now on Broadway, follows Putin’s rise to power and the Russian oligarchs who mistakenly thought he’d be their puppet.Going from Princess Diana, a lovely icon who generated waves of sympathy, to Vladimir Putin, an icy villain who generates waves of disdain, might be difficult for some writers.Not Peter Morgan.After pulling back the curtain on the British royal family for six seasons of “The Crown,” Morgan was keen to move on. He had an idea for a play about the oligarchs who, in the 1990s, helped propel an obscure Putin to power and then had to watch as their Frankenstein changed the course of Russian history in a disastrous way.The resulting drama, “Patriots,” which opens on Broadway on April 22, offered Morgan a different way to approach recent history, and a new challenge: switching from the royals, who are household names but not ultimately very powerful, to oligarchs, who are super powerful but not generally household names.Morgan enjoys writing about the vilified, giving them a fighting chance. In “Patriots,” he creates a jigsaw of four Russian men, their fates intertwining in the post-Soviet era, who represent a Byzantine spectrum of moral values.“It’s just a delicious combination of characters,” Morgan, 60, told me, in an interview at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Times Square. “There’s a sort of violence, whereas in ‘The Crown,’ there’s this politeness and there’s repression, and it’s very female. There’s something very male, very violent about this play. It felt like a natural thing to do, having spent so much time in the one world to go into another world just to relax a little.”Will Keen, left, as Vladimir Putin and Michael Stuhlbarg as Boris Berezovsky in “Patriots,” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Netflix Becomes a Broadway Producer With Peter Morgan’s ‘Patriots’

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      The streamer is co-producing a play about Putin’s Russia from the creator of “The Crown” while also developing a screen adaptation.Netflix, the streaming behemoth that has evolved from mailing out DVDs in red envelopes to becoming a hugely important player in the entertainment industry, is embarking on a new adventure: producing on Broadway.The company will pick up its first Broadway credit this spring as a producer of “Patriots,” by Peter Morgan, the creator of the hit Netflix series “The Crown.” The new play is about an oligarch who was an early supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia but then fell out with him and wound up dead.Even before “Patriots” begins its Broadway previews on April 1, Netflix is already in the early stages of developing a screen adaptation of the story, according to Emily Feingold, a Netflix spokeswoman.“Patriots” will be Netflix’s first Broadway credit, but not its first stage venture. The company is actively involved as a producer of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a play now running in London that is a prequel of sorts to the popular Netflix streaming series. The “Stranger Things” production is expected to come to Broadway, but the timing and other specifics are unknown.Netflix’s foray into Broadway producing comes at a time when the entertainment industry has been aggressively working to monetize intellectual property — adapting popular titles and franchises on many different platforms, including not only film, television and stage but also books, video games and immersive experiences.Broadway has long had the attention of Hollywood studios — Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal have been particularly active in pursuing stage adaptations of their films. And for some time now, the recording industry has been actively involved on Broadway, seeing the stage as another way to repurpose pop song catalogs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Patriots,’ About Putin’s Falling Out With an Oligarch, Is Broadway Bound

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      The play, by Peter Morgan of “The Crown,” will star Michael Stuhlbarg and is scheduled to open in April.“Patriots,” a well-received British play about a Russian oligarch’s ill-fated role in the rise of Vladimir V. Putin, will transfer to Broadway in April, adding a dose of international intrigue to a packed spring season.The drama, which the critic Matt Wolf called “gripping” and “coolly unnerving” in a 2022 review of a London production for The New York Times, was written by Peter Morgan, the creator and primary writer of “The Crown,” the Emmy-winning six-season Netflix show. Morgan has written two other plays that made it to Broadway, “The Audience,” about Queen Elizabeth II, and “Frost/Nixon,” about the journalist David Frost’s famous interviews of former President Richard M. Nixon.The Broadway production of “Patriots” will star Michael Stuhlbarg, who last appeared on Broadway in 2005, when he received a Tony nomination for starring in Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman.” Stuhlbarg has numerous stage credits, but most recently has worked in film (“A Serious Man”) and television (“Boardwalk Empire”). Stuhlbarg will play Boris A. Berezovsky, a Russian business tycoon who helped Putin rise to power but then fell out with him and later died in exile. The role was played in London by Tom Hollander.Stuhlbarg will star alongside Will Keen, who will play Putin, now the president of Russia; Keen also played that role in London, and for that performance won last year’s Olivier Award for best supporting actor in a play. Luke Thallon will also reprise the role he played in London, as another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.The production is scheduled to begin previews April 1 and to open April 22 at the Barrymore Theater.The play is directed by Rupert Goold, a British director who has twice been nominated for Tony Awards, for “Ink” and “King Charles III,” and who will also be directing “The Hunt” at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn early this year. “Patriots” was staged in 2022 at the nonprofit Almeida Theater in London, where Goold is the artistic director, and last year it had a profitable commercial run in London’s West End.The lead producer of the Broadway production will be Sonia Friedman, who is a major force in both the West End and on Broadway.The play will open in the final days of a Broadway season that is proving to be quite challenging for producers and investors because production costs are higher and ticket sales are lower than they were before the coronavirus pandemic. The economics have been especially hard for musicals. On Sunday evening, the producers of “How to Dance in Ohio,” a musical about a group of young autistic adults, announced that show would close on Feb. 11, after 99 performances. And last week, the producers of “Harmony,” a musical about a German singing group that ran afoul of the Nazis, announced that show would close on Feb. 4. More

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      Putting Putin Onstage, in ‘Patriots’

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      Will Keen embodies Russia’s president in a West End production. “It’s been fascinating how the perception of him and the play keep changing,” he said.On a recent evening, the British actor Will Keen was onstage at the Noël Coward Theater in London playing one of the world’s most divisive men: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.For much of the first half of “Patriots,” which is largely set in the 1990s after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Keen portrays the character sympathetically — as a minor politician who could only afford cheap suits and whose success was dependent on a friend’s largess. Later on, when an adviser suggests Putin, now president, should keep his enemies close, Keen’s portrayal becomes chilling. “Why would I want to do that,” he replies, “when I can simply destroy them?”Written by Peter Morgan, the creator of “The Crown,” “Patriots” stars Tom Hollander as Boris Berezovsky, a real-life oligarch who made a fortune in post-Soviet Russia, only to fall out with Putin and end up exiled in London, where he died under mysterious circumstances, in 2013.Despite that focus, it’s Keen’s performance that has grabbed attention since the play debuted at the Almeida Theater, in London, last June. Arifa Akbar, in The Guardian, said that even when Putin “grows more megalomaniacal, Keen avoids caricature and keeps his character’s self-righteous desire for Russian imperialism convincingly real, and chilling.” Matt Wolf, reviewing that production for The New York Times, said that Keen “astonishes throughout.” In April, Keen won the best supporting actor award at the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.In a recent interview at the Noël Coward theater, where “Patriots” is running through Aug. 19, Keen said that, although the script was written long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the war had changed the feel of the play, making it seem as much Putin’s “origin story” as the tale of an oligarch’s demise. Keen, 53, said that his performance made some audiences uneasy, but it was “nice to be in a show that’s asking questions, rather than providing answers.”In an interview, Keen discussed what he’d learned by getting inside Putin’s head. The following are edited excerpts from that conversation.Keen, right, and Tom Hollander, who plays Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch who died in London under mysterious circumstances in 2013. Marc BrennerWhy did you want to play such a figure?Well, I first learned about it in 2021 — so before the invasion. It didn’t feel as present as it does now. He felt like an autocratic and terrifying figure, obviously, but he didn’t feel like an autocratic and terrifying figure who was also impinging on the world’s safety. It’s been fascinating how the perception of him and the play keep changing.You’re often played villains or antiheroes, including Macbeth and Father MacPhail in “His Dark Materials.” Do you worry about being typecast?As a citizen, I might look at these people as villains, but as an actor, I can’t do that. I want to be as sympathetic as possible to the character — or as empathetic, at least. Putin is a baddie, but I don’t want to be playing him as a pantomime.I’m really interested by our perception of autocrats. From our side, it’s an image of immorality. But in order to do the things that he’s done, he must have an incredibly intense sensation of his own morality — an idea of justice, an idea that he’s setting wrongs right.Some political commentators say Putin is motivated by a desire to restore the Soviet Union. Is that what you mean by setting wrongs right?I’m not in any position to comment politically, but my sense of the character is of somebody who has a particularly deeply sensitized attitude to betrayal. It’s a bit like the medieval idea of kingship, where the king becomes the country in some way: There’s this sense in which Russia — the land — is his body and there’s an absolutely personal, almost physical betrayal, in the break up of the union.What Peter Morgan does so brilliantly in the play is show how Putin’s personal friendships, and the betrayals he experiences in them, impinge on the political sphere too.Theater critics have praised you for mimicking Putin physically, as much as the emotion of the performance. How did you prepare for this?Well, I read and read and read and watched and watched and watched.Physically, what was most useful to me was just observing him in press conferences — I got this enormous sense of inner turmoil, covered by an incredible physical stillness. There’s a sense of containment to him, like he’s trying to hold everything inside.A lot of people have noticed that stillness, especially of the right hand not moving in his walk. And there are other ex-K.G.B. people who have the same thing. The K.G.B. also talk about channeling your tension into your foot. And you do observe his right foot moving very slowly in interviews under the table. Onstage, I also find that tension in him coming out in my fingers.As a citizen, I might look at these people as villains, but as an actor, I can’t do that,” Keen said. “I want to be as sympathetic as possible to the character.”Marc BrennerAs the invasion unfurled, did you change anything in your portrayal?Of course you think about the conflict, but we didn’t discuss, “Let’s make him more chilling” or anything like that. The way the play’s written, it’d be chilling whenever it was performed.I think it’s actually dangerous to think about the effect you’ll have on audience. All you can think about really is, “Is it true?”This isn’t the only recent play in London featuring Putin. In 2019, Lucy Prebble had a hit with “A Very Expensive Poison” about his involvement in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a spy-turned-whistle-blower. Why do you think Putin is becoming a staple of British theater?Well, I don’t know whether he’s becoming a staple. But it does seem that what has happened in Russia lends itself to extremely interesting plays — this ideological battle that’s going on with incredibly high stakes.And theater since time immemorial has studied autocrats, and strong and violent authority is a productive, dramatic force against which to set any kind of dissident opinion.All the characters that one has played sort of talk to each other, at some level, but I would compare Putin to Macbeth, of course. They’re obvious autocrats, but for Macbeth the great motivator is fear, whereas, here, I’d say it’s perceived injustice. The result in both cases is a sort of very performed manliness.What have audience reactions been like?Absolutely wonderful, although sometimes it does seem people don’t know what to do at the end: Should we clap? A lot of Russians have said they feel like he’s in the room, which is incredibly encouraging.I don’t think I’ve spoken to any Ukrainians about it. I’ve had boos, definitely, at the end. But I don’t know whether that was a Ukrainian boo or a British boo. There’s a kind of international language of booing.Has the role affected you personally?No, I wash him off at the end of the show. But it is a bleak place to inhabit — not because of a sense of guilt, it’s the agony of being someone who is obsessed by betrayal and vengeance. More

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      ‘The Crown’ Could Have Damaged Charles. Becoming King Has Helped.

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      The latest season of the Netflix drama depicts Charles’s contentious divorce from Diana, but in Britain, several prominent figures and the news media have rallied behind him.LONDON — Six months ago, the new season of “The Crown” was shaping up as another public-relations headache for Prince Charles. The timeline of the popular historical drama had reached the 1990s, which meant that it was going to dissect the collapse of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, an unwelcome exhumation of the most painful, mortifying chapter of his adult life.Some advising the prince were pondering how to counter the narrative, according to people with knowledge of the workings of Buckingham Palace, worried that it could tarnish the reputation of a man who, in recent years, had come to be known less for his peccadilloes than for his embrace of worthy causes such as climate change.Yet now, as Season 5 of the Netflix series has unspooled, it is clear that “The Crown” has dealt Charles at worst a glancing blow. In a few cases, it has even cast him in a positive light — celebrating, for example, his philanthropy, in an episode that ended with a charmingly awkward Charles (played by Dominic West) break dancing at an event for his charity, the Prince’s Trust.What changed, of course, is that two months before the new season arrived, Prince Charles became King Charles III.His ascension transformed the star-crossed heir into a dignified sovereign and Britain’s head of state. London’s tabloid papers, which once dined out on every morsel of Charles’s messy personal life, now have little appetite for embarrassing the sitting monarch. On the contrary, most prefer to focus on how gracefully the new king has succeeded his revered mother, Queen Elizabeth II.King Charles III standing vigil with the coffin of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in London in September. He has been praised in the British news media for his handling of the transfer of power.Pool photo by Dominic LipinskiThen, too, there is the show’s unapologetic mixing of fact and fiction, which drew sporadic complaints when it dealt with events of the more distant past, but has reached a kind of critical mass when it comes to depicting the well-worn saga of Charles and Diana’s marriage.Their story was extravagantly covered at the time and is vividly remembered by millions of people, especially in Britain. Some of those actually involved in the events have voiced their outrage at the artistic license taken by the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, calling the most recent season a “barrel-load of nonsense” and “complete and utter rubbish.” Those critics — among them two former prime ministers, John Major and Tony Blair; a famous actress, Judi Dench; and one of Charles’s biographers, Jonathan Dimbleby (who called the show “nonsense on stilts”) — inoculated the king against some of the damage he might otherwise have suffered. Rather than keeping the spotlight on the tawdry events themselves, the critics shifted the focus to how “The Crown” had embellished them.“It is definitely the case that this series of ‘The Crown’ has come in for greater backlash than any previous series, particularly for its factual inaccuracies and the treatment of the current monarch,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the interplay between the monarchy and the media.The Return of ‘The Crown’The hit drama’s fifth season premiered on Netflix on Nov. 9.The Royals and TV: The royal family’s experiences with sitting for television interviews have been fraught. The latest season of “The Crown” explores that rocky relationship.Meeting the Al-Fayeds: The new season includes portrayals of the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, his son Dodi and his personal valet — who had all connections with the royal family.Republicanism on the Rise: Since “The Crown” debuted in 2016, there has been a steady increase in support for abolishing Britain’s monarchy. Has the show contributed to that change?Casting Choices: In a conversation with The Times, the casting director Robert Sterne told us how the drama has turned into a clearinghouse for some of Britain’s biggest stars.For the king, the chorus of outside detractors made it easier for him to ignore the series, according to the people with ties to Buckingham Palace, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with royal protocol. That is how the royal family handled the show’s previous four seasons. The king’s communications secretary did not respond to a query about how the palace viewed the latest season.Whether the palace had a role in orchestrating the critiques is harder to establish. There are plenty of back-channel conversations — whether between palace officials and prominent outsiders or between aides to the king and royal correspondents and their editors.The season’s characters include the former prime ministers Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), left, and John Major (Jonny Lee Miller), both of whom have criticized the show’s accuracy.Keith Bernstein/Netflix“It will doubtless have been clear to allies of the crown, including former prime ministers, that there was some discontent and anxiety about the new season of ‘The Crown’ before it first aired,” Owens said..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.But public figures like Major also had an incentive to protect themselves. “The Crown” depicts him and Charles holding a private meeting in which a frustrated prince lobbies the prime minister for help in pushing the queen to abdicate because she is superannuated and poses a threat to the monarchy’s survival. Such a meeting would have raised constitutional issues, and Major says it never happened.“They’re not doing the palace’s work for it,” said Dickie Arbiter, who served as a spokesman for the queen from 1988 to 2000. “They are being besmirched and they are defending themselves.”But Arbiter said that the palace should steer clear of litigating the facts itself. “You start getting into ‘he said, she said,’” he noted. “You just give it oxygen.” British viewers, he added, would recognize the factual discrepancies without a warning.“The only difficulty is with the global audience, who will believe the royal family are like that,” Arbiter added. “It’s your lot on the other side of the Atlantic that believe every word of it.”Just in case there is any residual confusion at home, British papers, including the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard, have published detailed fact-checking pieces. Some scenes, like the furtive tête-à-tête between Charles and Major, have been comprehensively debunked.In one scene in “The Crown,” a charmingly awkward Charles break dances at an event for his charity, the Prince’s Trust.NetflixOthers, like the underhanded tactics used by a BBC correspondent, Martin Bashir, to persuade Diana to give him an interview, were judged to be mostly accurate, if somewhat amped up for dramatic effect. Still others, like Charles’s attempt at break dancing, did happen, if not when the series said they did.Beyond the specific facts, some people with ties to the palace argue that “The Crown” is so obviously tilted against Charles that it is easy to dismiss. As evidence, they cite the unequal treatment of two particularly cringe-worthy 1990s scandals, named “Tampongate” and “Squidgygate” by the British news media.The series, they said, dwells on the prince’s extramarital affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles, most luridly in an episode about an overheard phone call between Charles and Camilla in which he tells her he wishes he could “live inside your trousers,” perhaps by being reincarnated as a tampon.But it ignores a similar episode involving Diana, then still married, and her close friend, James Gilbey, in which their intimate phone conversation was surreptitiously picked up and published in The Sun newspaper. In it, Gilbey called her by an instantly notorious nickname, Squidgy.To some who have worked in the palace, the season’s most glaring discrepancy involves not Charles, but the queen. Morgan, who wrote the current season, doctored her celebrated speech in November 1992, when she described that year as her “annus horribilis.” Even in a speech suffused with regret, the queen made no mention of the “errors of the past,” as Imelda Staunton does, in her portrayal of Elizabeth.Morgan, who declined a request for an interview, has never denied taking license with the facts in “The Crown.” Netflix describes the series as “fictionalized drama inspired by true events,” though it has resisted calls to put a disclaimer on each episode. Some critics have joked that if Morgan were serious about accuracy, he would not have cast a handsome actor, like West, in the role of Charles.But it’s not clear, even if the series were meticulously accurate, that the British news media would be in the mood to re-air the dirty laundry of a man who is Britain’s first new monarch since 1952. Charles has been widely praised for his performance since taking the throne, including when trouble brewed at the palace this past week.That trouble was set off by a royal aide when she repeatedly asked a Black woman born in Britain, who had been invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace, “Where are you from?” The reception guest, Ngozi Fulani, posted about the encounter on Twitter, and within hours, the royal aide, Susan Hussey, who had served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, resigned with “profound apologies for the hurt caused.”As it happens, Hussey appears briefly as a character in “The Crown,” encouraging her husband, Marmaduke, then the chairman of the BBC, to ask the broadcaster to produce a laudatory program on the queen to cheer her up. (The BBC’s director general at the time, John Birt, instead greenlighted the infamous Bashir interview with Diana).Royal experts said that the palace’s swift reaction, and blunt condemnation, of Fulani’s treatment showed that Charles was intent on demonstrating that he would not tolerate any perception of racist behavior in the royal household. It averted what could have been another cycle of punishing headlines for the monarchy.According to Geordie Greig, a former editor of Tatler magazine and of The Daily Mail, “The only conversations about the king are, ‘Isn’t he doing a great job?’” More

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      At the End of Her Reign, the Queen Takes a Bow Onstage

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      “Handbagged,” a play that opened in London a day after Queen Elizabeth II died, depicts a clever, compassionate monarch. But theatrical depictions haven’t always been so reverential.LONDON — When the Kiln Theater planned its current revival of “Handbagged,” nobody knew how extraordinary the timing would turn out to be.The 2013 play, by Moira Buffini, is one of a long line of dramas to put Queen Elizabeth II center stage. But its reopening during this period of mourning for the monarch turns out to serve the piece well, communicating a respect and affection for her memory that chime with the public mood. (The play’s first preview was Sept. 9, the day after the queen’s death.)Plays can catch a moment, which is what “Handbagged” has done. Seeing Indhu Rubasingham’s production several days before the queen’s state funeral, I felt an audience connecting with the play with an intensity I didn’t sense during its West End transfer in 2014. Theater, a live art, can seem especially vital at times like this. Would it have felt as moving to be watching “The Crown” on TV that recent afternoon? I doubt it.Several other playwrights have given voice to this essentially mysterious figure. Plays like Peter Morgan’s “The Audience” and Alan Bennett’s “A Question of Attribution” revealed the queen to be a great theatrical subject: wry and witty, her onstage intelligence feeding a sense among the public that so private a person always knew more than she let on.Some Key Moments in Queen Elizabeth’s ReignCard 1 of 9Becoming queen. More

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      Putin, Chekhov and the Theater of Despair

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      In London, a new play about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a revival of “The Seagull” explore undercurrents of pain.LONDON — There’s a chill in the air at the Almeida Theater, notwithstanding the record-breaking heat here. That drop in temperature comes from the coolly unnerving “Patriots,” a new drama whose look at power politics in Russia over the last quarter-century induces a shiver at despotism’s rise.The gripping production, directed by Rupert Goold, runs through Aug. 20.Written by Peter Morgan (“The Crown,” “Frost/Nixon”), “Patriots” surveys the sad, shortened life of Boris Berezovsky, the brainiac billionaire who died in 2013, age 67, in political exile in London. An inquest into Berezovsky’s mysterious death returned an unusual “open verdict,” but on this occasion, it is unequivocally presented as a suicide: The play ends with this balding man, bereft of authority, preparing to end his life.An academic whiz-turned-oligarch who expedited the rise of the younger Vladimir V. Putin, Berezovsky later fell out with the onetime ally who enlarged his power base, according to the play, with promises of “liberalizing Russia,” yet proceeded to do anything but.Morgan introduces Berezovsky, age 9, as a math prodigy whose mother hoped he might become a doctor. (A gleaming-eyed Tom Hollander plays the role throughout.) From there, we move forward 40 years to find Berezovsky an integral member of Russia’s moneyed elite welcoming to his office an obsequious Putin, then deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.“Respected Mr. Berezovsky,” says an initially indrawn, ferret-like Putin, “one would have to live on another planet not to know you!” But it isn’t long before Putin has changed his tune, and his tone, as he rises from prime minister to president and consolidates power around himself. In one notably effective wordless scene, Putin tries out poses in front of a mirror to see which makes him look most impressive. His earlier hesitancy has given way to a man in love with his own heroism.Berezovsky looks on at so dramatic a change in character appalled, urging the former K.G.B. operative to “know your place.” But Putin by this point simply won’t be sidelined. And besides, reasons Putin, why hold your enemies close when they can just as easily be destroyed?Tom Hollander as Boris Berezovsky in “Patriots.”Marc BrennerGoold, the director, dealt with a different headline-maker at the Old Vic this spring in “The 47th,” which imagined Donald J. Trump in the run-up to the next presidential election. Goold is in better company this time: “Patriots” is a richer, less fanciful play, with grim resonances for today. Although Morgan rightly leaves it to the audience to make the connection, you can draw a line between the glorious empire Putin yearns for in the play and his ongoing attack on Ukraine.In one of the performances of the year, Will Keen, as the Russian leader, astonishes throughout, bringing his character to agitated, unpredictable life. His early fawning in Berezovsky’s presence gives way to an icy rejection that finds its fullest expression when his onetime mentor writes as a fellow patriot requesting permission to come home to Russia. Putin dictates a reply, then tells his secretary to rip the letter up: Berezovsky, Putin concludes, “is not worth it.”Hollander impresses, too, as he did in a dazzling star turn in “Travesties,” which won the actor a 2018 Tony nomination — two talky plays requiring an actor at home with reams of language. His character is both a quick-tempered womanizer, and too naïve to realize the young Putin’s potential for authoritarian misrule.Widening the play’s scope yet further is the Russian president’s friend, the oligarch Roman Abramovich (the excellent Luke Thallon), who battles Berezovsky over ownership of the oil company Sibneft. That case, which came to trial in London in 2012, plays out here as a resounding defeat for Berezovsky that only amplifies his psychic distress. Alexander Litvinenko (Jamael Westman, a former leading man in “Hamilton”), the Putin critic who was poisoned in 2006, shows up, too, as the “most honorable” of dissidents (or so Morgan maintains): a political casualty wreathed in glory that the sorrowful Berezovsky never knew.There’s an aspect of bravery, you feel, in writing “Patriots” at all while Putin is on the march. (That said, like Trump with “The 47th,” it’s possible these men’s egos would thrive on the attention.) In the days after Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, orchestras, concert halls and opera houses pulled Russian works from their stages, and it looked as if it might no longer be allowable to perform the Russian repertory in the West; overseas trips by the Bolshoi Ballet, among other storied Russian arts companies, were canceled, as well.Emilia Clarke, second from right, in Anya Reiss’s interpretation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” directed by Jamie Lloyd at the Harold Pinter Theater.Marc BrennerSo it’s a relief to welcome a Russian classic, “The Seagull,” first presented in 1896 by Anton Chekhov, who died nearly a half-century before Putin was even born. That this first of Chekhov’s four great plays ends, as does “Patriots,” with a suicide is an intriguing coincidence that also points to the undercurrents of pain that inform both plays.Performed barefoot and in modern dress, Jamie Lloyd’s enthralling production, at the Harold Pinter Theater through Sept. 10, furthers the stripped-back approach to the classics he brought to a recent “Cyrano de Bergerac” that was acclaimed in New York and London.Just as that play dispensed with a fake nose for its title character, this “Seagull,” seen here in Anya Reiss’s 2012 version, never features the wounded bird of the title onstage. Doing without props of any kind, the cast members, headed by the “Game of Thrones” alumna Emilia Clarke in a terrific West End debut, deliver the play seated on green plastic chairs and boxed in by chipboard; they speak with a quiet intensity, as though we were eavesdropping on the characters’ innermost thoughts. Some will be exasperated by the approach, but I was riveted from the first hushed utterance to the last.Like “Patriots,” this “Seagull” draws from its own well of grief, even if the world of writers and actresses in Chekhov’s play is a long way from Morgan’s power-brokers and politicos. Lloyd’s ensemble communicates the shifting affections of a quietly devastating play that leaves you transfixed by the theatrical potency of despair.Patriots. Directed by Rupert Goold. Almeida Theater, through Aug. 20.The Seagull. Directed by Jamie Lloyd. Harold Pinter Theater, through Sept. 10; in cinemas Nov. 3. More