Review: Archduke – Royal Court Theatre

Chris Morris’s 2010 film Four Lions follows four British Muslims in Sheffield planning a suicide bombing. The mismatched quartet are incompetent, bickering, radicalised more by group dynamics and wounded masculine pride than by any coherent theology or ideology. Rajiv Joseph’s 2017 play Archduke maps almost exactly onto this structure.

The film’s central comic engine is the gap between their explosive ambitions and their total haplessness. They are manipulated by slightly smarter people, undermined by their own stupidity, and driven less by genuine belief than by a need for purpose, brotherhood and significance. The bombing succeeds, more or less by accident.

Back in Belgrad, three young men — marginalised, hungry, patriotic and far from the sharpest knives in any cutlery drawer — are recruited by a charismatic authority figure (the Captain). He persuades them that their terminal cases of tuberculosis are a metaphor for Austro-Hungarian oppression, feeds them a meal, and points them to Sarajevo. With nothing left to lose, they set off armed with grenades and first-class train tickets for their place in history, led by the historical figure Gavrilo Princip.

Chris Morris’s 2010 film Four Lions follows four British Muslims in Sheffield planning a suicide bombing…Rajiv Joseph’s 2017 play Archduke maps almost exactly onto this structure.

This American playwright’s typical method is the compression of vast historical or geopolitical subject matter into tight two-hander or small-ensemble pieces, often using low-ranking foot soldiers as the lens: the titular guards of Guards at the Taj, marines in Iraq in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (recently revived at the Young Vic), and here, terrorist recruits in Belgrade. In each, vast historical machinery is filtered through the words and actions of the small men caught beneath it.

Direction, Cast, and Design Defy a Weak Script

What rescues this European premiere, partially, is Lyndsey Turner, who directs with far more conviction than the script deserves. As she showed amply in her past acclaimed work, she has a knack for making modern dialogue jump off the page and come alive, even when spoken by figures who have no right to be speaking that way. Under Turner’s guidance, the cast brings these figures to life with striking vulnerability. The deprivation and desperation of the Belgrade-bound lackeys register less through Joseph’s words than through how they move, talk and flinch at the world around them, swallowing the Captain’s lies faster than a hot beef sandwich. Their childlike demeanours make the ending considerably more tragic than anything Joseph manages to write.

Among the cast, Abraham Popoola — recently seen battling Nicolas Cage in Amazon Prime’s Spider-Noir — is a revelation as Trifko, the Captain’s aide sent out with the other two on the mission. He leans hard into the role’s physicality, either verbally intimidating his companions or, on the Captain’s instruction, beating one of them up, while somehow retaining our sympathy throughout. Janice Connolly is another standout as Sladjana, the devout housekeeper who pivots from endless plates of food to a late, unexpectedly serious monologue urging one of the stooges to abandon the Captain’s mission. With easily the fewest lines of any character, Connolly leaves the most lasting impression, handling the comic and the elegiac with equal assurance.

The production would be far weaker without Es Devlin’s set, which carries us from a gloomy underground tunnel into the dim Captain’s lair (read that how you want) and finally onto the gleaming train carriage bound for Sarajevo. Each space is rich in atmosphere, and Neil Austin’s lighting gives the whole evening an arc of its own that the writing rarely earns on its own terms.

Relentless Comedy and Historical Trivialisation

Joseph’s script lets the production down in two distinct ways. The comic tone is so relentless it suggests Father Ted‘s idiots hanging out with a Basil Fawlty-like Captain, except the jokes are so over the top that they ought to require air traffic control clearance. The humour is largely obvious and unoriginal, and it completely lacks the insights and bite Morris brought to works like Four Lions and Brass Eye. It is hit-and-miss to the point of practically begging for a laugh track. Where Bengal Tiger at the Young Vic earned its laughter through Kathryn Hunter’s grim observation and sublime acting, there is precious little of that craft here.

The greater failure is historical. The record shows Gavrilo Princip had been expelled from school for his politics well before the Sarajevo plot, and had already aligned himself with revolutionary outfits like Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia) long before any Captain offered him so much as a biscuit. He likely did have tuberculosis. But even healthy, he would have happily put a bullet in Franz Ferdinand, and not for the price of a sandwich.

What rescues this European premiere, partially, is Lyndsey Turner, who directs with far more conviction than the script deserves. As she showed amply in her past acclaimed work, she has a knack for making modern dialogue jump off the page and come alive, even when spoken by figures who have no right to be speaking that way.

Bending the historical record for dramatic purposes is one thing; Joseph asks us to swallow an entirely different account of how the assassination came about, dangerously stripping these figures of their actual political agency. What next, a biopic of Margaret Thatcher in which the Iron Lady bans school milk to spare lactose-intolerant children and where she shuts the mines purely to improve working conditions? Or a drama in which Hitler invades England solely to get his paintings hung at the National Gallery?

Turner’s intelligent direction goes some way toward rescuing the production from its own inadequacies, and the luscious visuals from Devlin and Austin are the unambiguous winner of the evening. But there is only so much lipstick that can be applied to this particular pig of a script.

Featured Image: Stanley Morgan, Marc Wootton, Christopher Walley – Archduke – Image by Helen Murray