'Archduke' review — meet the scrappy young assassins who triggered the First World War

Read our review of Rajiv Joseph's play Archduke, now in performances at the Royal Court to 25 July.

Summary

• Rajiv Joseph’s play Archduke comes to the Royal Court
• The show is a fictionalised account of the young men who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand
• Stanley Morgan is the highlight as the scrappy Gavrilo
• Es Devlin's tunnel-like set captures the underground setting

Director Lyndsey Turner has two historical plays on in London this summer, both of which explore the “manosphere”: a modern term for an ancient concept. The scorching 1536 is about three young women in rural Essex set against the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s execution and has rightfully made a name for writer Ava Pickett.

American playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph’s Archduke, which was first seen Off Broadway last autumn, features three young Serbian men who become involved in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie – one of the key triggers for the First World War. It has its moments, but it can’t hold a candle to Turner’s previous project in terms of wit, characterisation, and thematic richness, and unfortunately ultimately registers as bit of a simplistic anticlimax.

Two teenagers, Gavrilo (Stanley Morgan) and Nedeljko (Chris Walley), meet in a disused warehouse where they’ve been sent by a doctor to meet a guy who will help them find meaning in their lives. Both are consumptive and penniless. They discuss suicide until Trifko (Abraham Popoola) joins them with the prospect of allying with “The Captain” (Marc Wootton), who makes a speciality of recruiting young men to his Serbian nationalism cause by plying them with food and inducting them into an exclusive society characterised by fine black leather gloves.

Comparisons with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot are inevitable, and perhaps also with Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Morgan’s performance as Gavrilo (a fictionalised version of Gavrilo Princip, the real man who fired the gun) is the highlight, with a scrappy and hungry kind of instinctive intelligence.

Wootton’s Captain, with his fruity voice and proclamations about the toxicity of the Austro-Hungarian alliance, is a caricature but one that impressionable youths might be drawn in by. It’s suggested that his role in the exceptionally gruesome double murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia in 1903 was in fact triggered by some kind of disturbing psychosexual obsession with Queen Draga rather than a sincere belief in Serbian nationalism – he isn’t someone you’d want to cross.

The only female character, Sladjana (Janice Connolly), the Captain’s “lady cook”, feeds the recruits with delicious home cooking and gives them bundles of herbs to ward off all sorts of afflictions on their trip to Sarajevo (as well as a deeply sinister sweet treat). She’s a folksy parody of a Slavic granny that’s possibly slightly derogatory.

There are a few good lines – Nedeljko compares sex to “taking a bath with a bunch of rabbits because it’s soft and warm but also ‘What am I doing here?’” – but most of the attempts at humour are self-conscious. Es Devlin’s tunnel-like set, framed by a halo of light (Gavrilo is Serbian for Gabriel, the “Angel of the Lord”) excellently captures the underground – literally and metaphorically – setting, with a final transition to a train carriage in which the boys are afforded the chance to spend their last night in luxury.

The theme of disadvantaged young men being all too easy to brainwash is of course a pertinent one, but it isn’t enough to sustain a play on its own (and, in reality, none of the men involved in the assassination were radicalised on a whim). Ultimately, it serves as a bit of wish fulfilment – these men should have eaten sandwiches and gone out to meet girls instead; the tinderbox that was Europe in 1914 would have imploded without their little contribution.

Archduke is at performances at the Royal Court to 25 July. Book Archduke tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Archduke (Photos by Helen Murray)