Patriots. Almeida Theatre.

Patriots, Peter Morgan’s timely new work about the rise and fall of Boris Berezovsky is blessed with two stand out performances.

12 July 2022 Press Night

Much of Peter Morgan’s writing is about power, whether political in Frost / Nixon, or royal in The Crown, or both together in The Audience.  His concern is with imaginary conversations, events, and intrigues between those with power, those striving for it, and those struggling not to lose it.

All of these themes come together in spades in Patriots, Morgan’s efficient, interesting, and well-timed take on the oscillating fortunes of oligarchs and politicians in post-Soviet 1990s Russia.

Intentionally or otherwise, Morgan has left a question mark absent from his title. Because as the narrative develops there is a single blazing question hanging over his central characters, Vladimir Putin (Will Keen), Roman Abramovich (Luke Thallon) and Russia’s former richest man turned exile, Boris Berezovsky (Tom Hollander). Can any of them really be classified as true Patriots?

Boris Berezovsky was a childhood mathematics genius whose world-renowned expertise in decision-making theory made him, during the casino capitalism that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, very rich and powerful indeed.

Mentor to a young Abramovich, for a brief period in the chaos and collapse of early 90s Russia Berezovsky’s political clout was second only to the family clan surrounding President Yeltsin. Then he made a decision that, in retrospect, turned out to the one of the world’s worst. He manoeuvred a seemingly biddable former spy and taxi-driver Vladimir Putin as his proxy into positions of enormous power, first as director of state security and later as Prime Minister.

Putin turned out to be rather less pliable than anticipated and the two men soon turned on each other, with Abramovich playing the part of a go-between with his eye on the main chance.  Exiled to a Britain he hated, a brooding and homesick Berezovsky eventually took his own life.

In a compelling and magnetic performance by Hollander we witness an unpredictable, quixotic, and deeply amoral Berezovsky on an almost messianic mission to create a democratic Russia. That filling his own pockets with obscene amounts of corrupt cash might not sit easily with the democratic rule of law, does not seem to occur to the businessman.

How true to life is this picture of Berezovsky must be, as with many of Morgan’s real-life reimaginations, debatable. But the character the author has written certainly provides a perfect dramatic foil for Will Keen’s malevolent and eerily sinister Vladimir Putin, whose crusade to rebuild an imperial authoritarian Russian state is diametrically opposed to that of his former mentor. There is a clash of the titans at stake here with the audience as bystanders.

The Machiavellian machinations preceding Berezovsky’s all too predictable fall are the most interesting parts of the narrative. The question as to whether either man deserve the title Patriot is never really satisfactorily addressed. Perhaps that is because any kind of love, even love for one’s country, seems an entirely alien emotion to either of the characters that Morgan has written.

Rupert Goold directs snappily and with an elegant eye for the shifting hierarchies the play describes. He is helped Miriam Buether’s gorgeous cruciform set – a tacky casino bar, strewn with cash for much of the time, coloured in the deep red and gold palette favoured by Russia’s new rich. At the bar sit the supplicants. Atop the sit the powerful, with the characters changing positions signifying the ebb and flow of their fortunes.

Well worth seeing.

Writer Peter Morgan

Director Rupert Goold

Set Designer Miriam Buether

Cast

Tom Hollander Boris Berezovsky

Will Keen Vladimir Putin

Yolanda Kettle Marina Litvinenko

Luke Thallon Roman Abramovich

Jamael Westman Alexander Litvinenko

Duration: 2 hours 40 minutes. One interval.

Full Disclosure: I paid full box-office price for the ticket.