Theatre Review: Patriots - By William Cook

How did Vladimir Putin, a medieval tyrant, end up in charge of a modern superpower – a country that looked as if it had thrown off the shackles of Communism and embraced democracy and the free market?

That’s the pressing question that Peter Morgan’s absorbing new play (now transferred to the West End after its première at the Almeida Theatre last year) sets out to tackle.

Morgan is one of Britain’s finest dramatists, whose credits include The Queen, The Crown and The Damned United. Instead of simply focusing on Putin, which would have made for a flat, formulaic drama, he charts the rise and fall of Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who helped to make him.

This oblique approach is inspired. By casting Putin as Iago to Berezovsky’s Othello, Morgan reveals far more about Putin than if he’d tackled him head on.

At the start of the play, Berezovsky is flying high, cheerfully exploiting the vast opportunities for self-enrichment that Yeltsin’s chaotic regime created. Berezovsky’s justification for his avarice is that his Wild West capitalism is also enriching Russia – trickle-down economics of the crudest sort.

Berezovsky is gleefully corrupt, facilitating business deals with shameless bribes to state officials. The only man who can’t be bought is the Deputy Governor of St Petersburg, an obscure puritanical oddball called Vladimir Putin. When Putin loses his job and ends up as a taxi-driver, Berezovsky tries to turn him into a puppet who’ll do his bidding.

Initially, Berezovsky comes across as a thoroughly unattractive character. He’s a bad husband and an absent father. His only interest is making money. When Putin becomes president, and dismantles Russia’s nascent democracy, he finally finds his moral compass, but by then it’s far too late.

Played by almost any other actor, Berezovsky would be an unsympathetic figure, a man who sells his soul and then tries to buy it back at a knockdown rate. However, Tom Hollander is an actor of immense charm. His Berezovsky has such warmth and humanity that he becomes tragic – almost heroic.

Likewise, Will Keen resists the temptation to play Vladimir Putin as a pantomime villain. His Putin is awkward and insecure, full of pent-up rage – a personification of the forgotten Russian proletariat, who are furious they’ve been left behind while fat cats such as Berezovsky line their pockets.

Keen and Hollander are mesmeric, and they’re ably supported by Josef Davies as Alexander Litvinenko and Luke Thallon as Roman Abramovich. Litvinenko is an idealist who pays an awful price for his idealism. Abramovich is a realist who knows which way the wind is blowing. Yet, like Berezovsky and Litvinenko, Putin and Abramovich are both patriots – both motivated, in their own ways, by a deep, abiding love of Russia.

There’s a dearth of decent female parts, and a few too many phone conversations, but these are minor quibbles. Morgan’s play is compelling, and its malevolent ambience is enhanced by Miriam Buether’s lurid nightclub set, a striking metaphor for the amoral free-for-all of 1990s Russia.

This isn’t a play about a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing. A lot of the action happens in our own backyard. Litvinenko was poisoned here and died in a British hospital. Abramovich and Berezovsky did battle in a British court. Abramovich bought Chelsea Football Club. Berezovsky died in Berkshire, the buckle of the commuter belt.

At Berezovsky’s inquest, the British coroner recorded an open verdict. Patriots suggests he killed himself. After watching this engrossing drama, I’m not so sure.