Patriots at the Almeida is a gripping drama about the rise of Putin
The story of the rise of Putin and the oligarchs has been told through various lenses in recent years.
Author Peter Pomerantsev places shadowy “Kremlin demiurge” Vladislav Surkov at the heart of his gripping memoir-cum-investigation Nothing is True and Everything is Possible. Lucy Prebble’s all-singing, all-dancing play A Very Expensive Poison put Alexander Litvenenko front and centre.
In writer Peter Morgan’s (Frost/Nixon, The Crown) new play Patriots at the Almeida, Boris Berezovsky becomes the principle character – a charismatic, amoral, unlovable mathematics protégé who, like a figure from Greek tragedy, challenges the very gods, only to be crushed by his own hubris.
All three of these works capture the chaotic thrill of Russia’s lurch from communism to gangster capitalism in the wake of Perestroika, a time when an influx of unimaginable wealth crashed through Moscow on a wave of Stolichnaya and Beluga Caviar.
But Berezovsky is perhaps the most apt embodiment of this capricious era. Played by Tom Hollander, he stalks the Kremlin’s corridors of power with the fevered energy of a child who’s been handed the keys to not only the toy store, but the means of toy production. Presented as the smartest of the oligarchs – not least in his own estimations – he strategises and bargains his way to a fortune of billions, becoming consigliere to Boris Yeltsin and king-maker to Putin himself.
We already know how this story ends: Berezovsky exiled to London and dead by his own hand (probably…) and Putin enemy number one in modern geo-politics. But that doesn’t make the journey any less wild.
Berezovsky and Putin are presented as the yin and yang of the Russian soul, the former representing the chaos of change, the latter an icy, ruthless regressionist (he’s played brilliantly by Will Keen, who skillfully captures both the despot’s absurd machismo and his banal menace).
The wider cast of characters – speaking in regional British accents, a la The Death of Stalin – includes a wonderfully wet-behind-the-ears Roman Abramovich, an endearingly eccentric Litvenenko, and a very convincing Yeltsin.
The chaos of the era is mirrored in Rupert Goold’s production, with juddering jump cuts, surreal scene changes, extravagant lighting and even the odd song and dance number. It all feels appropriately manic – at least until Putin takes power.
There are some issues: there’s a running theme of infinity (a mathematical interest of Berezovsky’s) vs confinement, which is a little on-the-nose, and while the play attempts to provide both a potted history of modern Russia and a character study of Berezovsky, it falls slightly short on both fronts. It’s also a little kind to its cast of chancers and gangsters and dictators – Abramovic is given an especially easy ride but even Putin is presented as an essentially honest man corrupted by power.
But Hollander is magnetic, his performance so captivating that we’d probably be talking about awards were it not for Jodie Comer and Mark Rylance. His slow descent into despair is tragic in the literal sense, with his performance bordering on Shakespearian (Morgan’s creation borrows from both Richard III and Iago).
Patriots entertains rather than educates, but it’s a fascinating and brutal soap opera nonetheless.