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Putin Has a Lean and Hungry Look in Patriots
The Crown creator Peter Morgan’s new play redirects his eye for palace intrigue to the power dynamics of post-Perestroika Moscow.
“In the West you have no idea,” says the first person to speak to us from the stage (an imposing, rather busy mash-up of red cat walk, long power-broking table, seedy nightclub, and curving, prison-like brick wall designed by Miriam Buether; “It’s giving… Meatpacking bondage with LED tape,” said the friend who saw the show with me). The crushing irony is that Berezovsky envisioned himself as an architect of the future: “Ambition is the belief that the infinite is possible,” he tells his old teacher, Professor Perelman (Ronald Guttman), before leaving the academy to parlay his work in economic decision-making theory into money-making reality. Perhaps in a simpler, starker container, Patriots could have overcome some of its stylish detachment, but Rupert Goold is a director who likes flash, and the dressing he adds to the script doesn’t actually help its sense of real and present stakes.
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