It’s only 11 months since Peter Morgan’s hectic, tragicomic battle of political wills between Vladimir Putin and Boris Berezovsky opened at the Almeida, but already the play has gained new weight and prescience. Tom Hollander again gives a barnstorming, almost demonic performance as the oligarch who wanted to “save” Russia through capitalism – at considerable personal profit to himself.
Again, he’s matched by Will Keen’s (Olivier Award-winning) twitchy but slowly hardening Putin, the monster who destroys his creator. I don’t think a line has changed in Rupert Goold’s production, but Patriots feels like a deeper and more densely thoughtful work now.
