Review: ARCHDUKE at Royal Court Theatre

First off, let’s deal with the subject matter. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is soon to visit Sarajevo which as any student who was paying attention during history class knows, is where he was assassinated, presaging the First World War. But here, we never meet the young man who was considered by many to be a brilliant hope for a new age, nor any of his family, or entourage. Instead this bizarrely absurdist drama introduces us to three consumptive lads who have been approached by a mysterious intermediary with an offer of food and ‘important work’ before they die. The ‘job’, comes at the behest of a deranged military man Dimitrijevic (Marc Wootton) who wouldn’t look out of place in a Woody Allen movie. His recruits are to leave Belgrade by train and carry out the shooting which will cause the implosion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and bring about Serbian independence.

The quick-fire and often overlapping dialogue between strangers Gavrilo (Stanley Morgan) and mistrusting Nedeljko (Chris Walley) is partly neutralised by the arrival of a third man Trifko (Abraham Popoola). When they join the arch manipulator at his lair, they are feted with food and a much promised pudding by the elderly cook and surrogate mother to this strange band Sladjana (Janice Connolly). Thereafter follows a sequence of oddly pitched conversations, admissions (the lads are all virgins and fairly ignorant of worldly matters) and inadvertent revelations — which include Dimitrijevic’s humiliation by, and hatred of, women. He likes to remind the lads that he committed regicide by disembowelling a queen who had slept with every man at court except him, and then disembowelled her husband the King to be tidy and circumspect.

Directed by Lyndsey Turner, each actor leans into the pastiche of their over-written characters, delivering playfully amusing moments throughout. To describe the end result as verging on the surreal, would be an understatement. On opening night when the three would-be assassins embarked on their final train journey, the carriage door handle malfunctioned, leaving the trio to walk around the outside of the moving train and hop on board the set from the front. Not the slightest flicker of an embarrassed smirk crossed their faces but the audience were in raptures. Some of us weren’t entirely sure if the ruse hadn’t been intentional.

ARCHDUKE will surely serve as a reminder that theatre is a wholly subjective medium. I rather suspect that critics and audiences will have very mixed responses to the material. I for one, thought it thoroughly inventive and weirdly delightful — largely due to the cast’s insistence on embodying their utterly warped and engaging characters to full effect.

ARCHDUKE plays 2 hours including interval and continues at Royal Court until 25th July.

Archduke Tickets