Stuhlbarg, Michael

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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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      Michael Stuhlbarg Is Attacked in Central Park Before ‘Patriots’ Debut

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      The actor was walking on the Upper East Side on Sunday when a man threw a rock at him, striking the back of his neck, the police said. He is set to appear on Broadway on Monday evening.One day after he was struck with a rock in a random attack on the Upper East Side, the actor Michael Stuhlbarg will appear in Monday’s first preview of the Broadway play “Patriots,” in which he stars as a Russian oligarch who helped facilitate Vladimir V. Putin’s rise.Stuhlbarg, best known for his role as a gangster in the series “Boardwalk Empire,” was walking in Central Park on Sunday evening when a man threw a rock, hitting him in the back of the neck, the police said.Stuhlbarg chased the man, Xavier Israel, 27, out of the park, where he was taken into custody and charged with assault. The location where the man was arrested on East 91st Street is the address for the Russian consulate.The police said Stuhlbarg declined medical attention.Stuhlbarg “feels fine” and will appear onstage on Monday for his debut in “Patriots,” the show said in a news release. He plays Boris A. Berezovsky, a Russian business tycoon who reigned in post-Soviet Russia and helped install Putin as president, but then had a bitter falling out with the Kremlin and died in exile.The play, written by Peter Morgan, the creator of the British royalty drama “The Crown,” and directed by Rupert Goold, opens on April 22. It was first staged in 2022 in London, where Tom Hollander played Berezovsky.Stuhlbarg, 55, had his breakthrough lead performance in the Coen brothers film “A Serious Man,” going on to numerous onscreen roles, including as Dr. Richard Sackler, the prescription opioid magnate, in the limited series “Dopesick,” for which he was nominated for an Emmy.A fixture of New York’s theater scene in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuhlbarg last appeared on Broadway in 2005, when he received a Tony nomination for starring in Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman.” 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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      Venice: A Creepy ‘Call Me by Your Name’ Reunion in ‘Bones and All’

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      In this cannibal romance, the director Luca Guadagnino reunites Timothée Chalamet with Michael Stuhlbarg under very different circumstances.VENICE — There is a message that social scientists and environmental watchdogs have been trying to convey in this newspaper for a while. But maybe you haven’t really been listening. Maybe it will take a different messenger to catch your attention.“I think societal collapse is in the air,” Timothée Chalamet said on Friday at the Venice Film Festival.Though you might expect Chalamet to issue a doomy quote like that while promoting “Dune,” in which his character presides over the destruction of an empire, the 26-year-old actor tossed it out during a news conference for “Bones and All,” a new film that reunites him with Luca Guadagnino, the director of Chalamet’s breakout vehicle “Call Me by Your Name.”But then again, discussing “Bones and All” can put a person in a more contemplative frame of mind: Though it’s a romance — Chalamet plays one of two drifters, traveling together across the Midwest in search of belonging — the movie is stark, lonely and more than a bit gory because our two lovers happen to be cannibals.(Maybe now you understand why this meaty film is coming out Thanksgiving week.)Adapted from the novel by Camille DeAngelis, “Bones and All” tracks Maren (“Waves” star Taylor Russell), an 18-year-old who has just transferred to a new high school where she tentatively befriends a classmate and then, somewhat less tentatively, bites down hard on the girl’s finger. Maren’s dad (André Holland) has been dreading this sort of thing, as she’s shown an inclination toward consuming human flesh ever since she was a child. So when her father speeds her out of town and abandons her in the middle of nowhere, Maren must finally seek guidance from her own kind.Fortunately, she can smell fellow cannibals, including Chalamet’s Lee, who she forges a tender romance with, and Mark Rylance, who plays a veteran cannibal with unnerving Harry Dean Stanton energy. There’s even a scene where Maren and Lee run into a cannibal drifter played by Michael Stuhlbarg, who was so sweet in “Call Me by Your Name” and here is something else entirely.“It was a delight, the idea that we could kind of summon Michael to be the perverted father after having been the loving father in ‘Call Me by Your Name,’” Guadagnino said at the news conference. But if people on social media are tempted to draw a link from “Bones and All” to another “Call Me by Your Name” actor — Armie Hammer, whose career fell apart when the star’s cannibalistic fantasies came to light and sexual assault allegations followed — Guadagnino would rather you didn’t.“The relationship between this kind of digital muckraking and our wish to make this movie is nonexistent, and it should be met with a shrug,” Guadagnino told Deadline last week. “I would prefer to talk about what the film has to say, rather than things that have nothing to do with it.”Social media was a hot topic at the film’s news conference: Though the film is set in the 1980s, one journalist felt that the outcast characters in “Bones and All” suffer society’s judgment in a way that could be likened to a modern-day pile-on.“To be young now, or to be young whenever — I can only speak for my generation — is to be intensely judged,” Chalamet said. “It was a relief to play characters that are wrestling with an internal dilemma absent the ability to go on Reddit or Twitter, Instagram or TikTok and figure out where they fit in.”Added his co-star Russell, “The hope is really that you can find your own compass within all of [social media], and that seems like a difficult task now.”Chalamet concurred. “I think it’s tough to be alive now,” he said before issuing his prediction of societal collapse. What made him so certain? “It smells like it,” he said, as Lee or Maren might.But Chalamet wasn’t totally without hope. He said “Bones and All” portrayed that disenfranchisement and tribelessness in a way that could prove helpful now.“Without being pretentious, that’s why hopefully these movies matter,” Chalamet said. “The role of the artist is to shine a light on what’s going on.” More