‘Patriots’ Review: Peter Morgan’s Disappointing Power Play About Putin’s Rise in Post-Soviet Russia is a ‘Nyet’
variety.comFrank Rizzo In Peter Morgan’s tantalizing but disappointing new play “Patriots,” Boris Berezovsky is presented as a larger-than-life oligarch in a post-Soviet Russia who transforms Vladimir Putin from a middling “nobody” to an autocrat who will transform his country in ways unforeseen at home or globally.
There’s an expectation that in Morgan’s latest merging of historic fact and fiction that the writer of “The Crown” on TV, “The Audience” on stage and “The Queen” on film will once again provide an intimate and revealing look behind another well-guarded curtain, this time one that is made of iron.
But on this foreign turf Morgan’s footing is less sure, he’s less able to speak with the native authenticity that he brought to his other, far richer works.
These charmless characters are broadly outlined, psychologically shallow and simplistically played. The premise for this West End-to-Broadway transfer is intriguing at first, especially to audiences unfamiliar with the major forces at play in Russian politics of the ’90s: the breakup of the Soviet Union, the privatization of state property and the rise of oligarchs who rule as gangster capitalists.
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