While the urgent real-life drama of Russian oligarchs and Tory party donations rumbles on in the news, Peter Morgan’s play begins in 1991 and then explores the post-Soviet, post-perestroika era, when modern Russian oligarchy was born as businessmen scrambled to make their billions and assume the power of politicians.
Patriots circles around a group of high-profile dissidents, some now dead. Chief among them here is Boris Berezovsky, a talented mathematician turned businessman, and friend turned foe to Vladimir Putin.
Rupert Goold’s production is ultimately entertaining but choppy, taking time to settle before its power struggles gain intensity. It begins in unruly, hyperactive vein, with Berezovsky at the height of his powers. There are flashes of the men he protects or helps usher into power: Putin, an earnest deputy mayor of St Petersburg who calls on him for help to get into the Kremlin; a fresh-faced Roman Abramovich, who looks at Berezovsky with stars in his eyes; and Alexander Litvinenko, then a security officer who Berezovsky enlists on his payroll.
Miriam Buether’s set turns from blingy bar with a seedy Stringfellows vibe – strip lighting and fringed chandeliers – into TV studios and Kremlin offices with surprise cubicles and suddenly spotlit corners with pianos. In a restless first half that seems to be slightly scrambling for dramatic direction, the narrative spends too long summarising political history with bald exposition. The dialogue is flip, with crassly ironic nudge-nudge wink-wink jokes about Putin’s “decency”, his dislike of the length of his office desk at the Kremlin, and his innocuousness as a “puppet” president in his early days of power.
But the play resets itself in the second half, dropping the Dead Ringers-style wisecracks and gathering potency, gripping stillness and tension. Tom Hollander’s Berezovsky appears like a wealthy accountant but veers into bursts of antic prancing or bug-eyed fits of rage. Neither manifestation feels entirely convincing at first but as he becomes more broken, he emerges as a truly tragic figure, almost Shakespearean in his deposed, exiled state. “I created you,” he reminds Putin with furious indignation, sounding like Dr Frankenstein addressing his monster.
Luke Thallon makes an uncanny Abramovich, his shyness and boyish charm wavering uncertainly between contrivance and innocence, while Jamael Westman’s Litvinenko is the only likable character, although he looks a little too much like he has stepped off the set of a Jed Mercurio police procedural.
The show-stealing performance is Will Keen’s saturnine Putin who emerges as the greatest and most sinister force on stage. His is more than just an imitative performance and even when he grows more megalomaniacal, Keen avoids caricature and keeps his character’s self-righteous desire for Russian imperialism convincingly real, and chilling.
Patriots looks to the past and traces a line not only around Berezovsky’s rise, fall and final years of exile in Berkshire, but Putin’s transformation from politician to autocrat. There is no mention of Ukraine, but in his final incarnation there are all the signs of the warmongering expansionist, surveying the land and wanting to restore Russia to its past glory.
It seems like a missed opportunity that the drama is so firmly located in the past, considering the ever-growing story around Londongrad, and that Berezovky’s life in the UK is not touched upon – given Litvinenko and Abramovich’s presence in Britain, too.
Morgan’s play certainly draws our minds to how Russian’s 1% ended up here, playing out their power battles in UK courtrooms as was in the case with Berezovksy and Abramovich, and as fascinating as this post-perestroika era may be, it begs for a far fuller look at the London connection.
• At the Almeida theatre, London, until 20 August.
