You are well rewarded for making your way to the theater to see PATRIOTS. The script, tells the timely tale of Putin's rise to power and how the kleptocracy of post-Soviet Russia came to be...
You walk through the commotion of Times Square to get to the Barrymore Theatre to see British playwright Peter Morgan's PATRIOTS.The perfect weather of an early June evening might be your focus elsewhere in New York City.In Times Squarehowever, the assault on your senses makes traversing its pedestrian zone an exercise in sensory overstimulation management.As you take your seat in the theater staring at the oversized Soviet red star centerstage, you imagine that the seemingly serious and cerebral theater going crowd around you is also feeling some relief of getting past Busker-Central.We feel like we should be watching this play in a theater on a college campus— not here. TIP: Bring a sweater, a blanket or maybe even a winter jacket— as the Barrymore is one of the Broadway theaters that seems intent to keep its audience awake by making them endure meat locker temperatures..
You are well rewarded for making your way to the theater to see PATRIOTS. The script, tells the timely tale of Putin's rise to power and how the kleptocracy of post-Soviet Russia came to be.The main character of the story is not Putin, actually, but Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch whose mantra might be "Greed is good, power is better, and best of all is power and money both." The script is Berezovsky's biopic, whom you may remember as (one of) the Russian oligarch expats found dead in London.His death came by noose, unlike other expat oligarchs who somehow came to ingest military grade radioactive poisons.
American ears automatically tune in that this script is a UK import because the foreign accents we hear are often more British than Russian sounding.Brits might not be as keenly aware of how the dialect coaching falls short.This is an extremely minor consideration when assessing the acting overall.The two leads—- Michael Stuhlbarg as Berezovsky and Will Keen as Vladimir Putin—especially electrify.Semi-bald Stuhlbarg is totally believable as a young child math prodigy meeting his tutor for the first time.You may want to dislike him as you watch him break all rules and use unfair advantages to amass his great wealth, but Stuhlbarg's Berezovsky has so much charm that he becomes an unlikely good guy.Berezovsky's foil of sorts is Putin, whom we watch transform fromthe Akakiy Akakievitch-like bureaucrat obscurity into the all-powerful autocratic scourge we know him to be today.It's easy to imagine how these roles in lesser hands might be over- or underplayed.These two leads are pitch perfect from beginning to end.
You'd be forgiven if your Times Square travels leave you somewhat immune to noticing the outstanding stagecraft that keeps PATRIOTS moving. The chronology of how Russia was re-born in post-Soviet times is all-important to this script.Projection designs and video clips tell us what year it is from time to time. Lighting and sound effects keep us in the moments. There are explosions from Chechen rebels— or were they false flag terror events orchestrated by Putin?There are discos bottling the newfound decadence of the post-Soviet era.There is the televised interpretation of political events shared across Russia's 11 time zones.There is a centerstage focal point that changes from Soviet Red Star, to math teacher's blackboard, to Berezovsky's throne-like desk, to Putin's stairway to power.
Well done all around— and definitely a top pick Broadway show for anyone visiting Manhattan in the next fortnight before the run ends.
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