‘Patriots’ review: ‘Crown’ creator’s Putin play is a bore on Broadway
nypost.combrilliant-turned-tacky “The Crown,” the royals series that he created for Netflix, his writing about historical figures has grown animatronic and hackneyed.
Mouthpiece Theater. And so it is here.Whereas the British playwright’s “Frost/Nixon” in 2006 was a juicy, intellectual and psychological boxing match, “Patriots” settles for being an impenetrable regurgitation of events propped up by director Rupert Goold’s worn-out bag of tricks.The stage is a long bar, lit in Moscow red, with scattered Russians stoically drinking on stools throughout.
The non-literal setting evokes, I dunno, too much Stolichnaya at 4 a.m.? Fine.And down at this Slavic pub designed by Miriam Buether, when a talky scene flatlines, Goold has the cast dance to throbbing club music for some reason, just as he did in the newspaper play “Ink” and Shakespeare-style drama “King Charles III.” The stabby-chic 2016 musical “American Psycho” he helmed on Broadway was 2½ hours of that.
And eight years later, the DJ’s back for “Russian Fascist.” The top-dog oligarch is Boris Berezovsky, a math-whiz-turned-billionaire who was one of Russia’s most powerful men during the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.Described as “theatrical,” he’s played by a saw-armed Michael Stuhlbarg as though we’re not at a show but a game of charades for the nearsighted.
Read more on nypost.com