Theatre in Review: Archduke (Roundabout Theatre Company)

	Patrick Page, Jason Sanchez, Adrien Rolet, Jake Berne, Kristine Nielsen. Photo: Joan Marcus

If Rajiv Joseph ever had a career in Major League Baseball, he would have been a pitcher; he certainly is a specialist in throwing curveballs. Surely the only playwright in existence to twice build works around the art of origami (Animals Out of Paper and Letters to Suresh), he has also penned anthropomorphic fantasies (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), psychological thrillers (The North Pool and Dakar 2000), blood-soaked shockers (Guards at the Taj), and epic historical dramas (Describe the Night), also making room for the genial sports-fanatic two-hander King James. His is the most diverse resume in the American theatre, and he broadens it again with Archduke, a black comedy about -- wait for it -- the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the seemingly random act of terror that precipitated the world-historical disaster that was World War I.

Archduke assembles three young men, Gavrilo, Trifko, and Nedeljko, all of whom are poor, jobless, and without family or friends. More to the point, all three are suffering from tuberculosis. Stunned by their grim prognoses, they are rounded up by Apis, aka the real-life figure Dragutin Dimitrijevic, a Serbian general bent on liberating his country from" the suffocating grip of Austro-Hungary." Working himself into a near apoplectic fury, he denounces the empire as "a two-headed abomination with German leadership in the west and Hungarian in the east. Disgusting. A twisted Siamese piglet, forever defecating into the mouth of its unfortunate twin." That's telling 'em, although maybe not the best approach when speaking at his generously furnished dinner table.

Apis wants Gavrilo, Trifko, and Nedeljko to be his agents of destruction, and much of Archduke is devoted to his feverish, farcical recruiting methods. The youths are among the empire's dimmest bulbs, unable to collectively achieve a three-digit IQ, but they are, in their way, sensitive lads, and they take some convincing. Apis -- appealing to their masculinity and patriotism, wooing them with the allure of martyrdom, and filling their heads with all sorts of nonsense and misinformation (including accusations of witchcraft) -- is the man for the job.

And Patrick Page is exactly the right man to play Apis. Wielding his imposing presence and that basso profundo voice to command, wheedle, seduce, and otherwise coax his dinner guests, he does his satanic best to fill their empty heads with a twisted sense of purpose. He even goes so far as to convince them that their illnesses are the empire's fault: Pointing to a map, he roars, "This is a living body, with a virulent infection here...in Vienna and here...in Budapest...And with these infections, illness hemorrhages through the secondary and tertiary organs of the body, and we, the Slavic states, become the cesspool of someone else's sickness." In one brief speech, a metaphorical ailment becomes a raging pandemic.

Page walks a narrow line between authority and absurdity, using his superb vocal instrument to put over any number of cracked notions. Revealing his deeply twisted nature, he recalls his key role in the murder, twenty years earlier, of Alexander I, King of Serbia. (Like most of the incidents referenced in Archduke, this really happened.) However this grim event actually unfolded, it is here recalled as a bloody farce: Showing up with a cadre of soldiers to depose the monarch, he is thrown for a loop when the gun-wielding queen fills him with bullets; enraged, he and his men slaughter the royal family "to save face." It was all her fault, he adds: "She killed off her entire family. And for years after, I would hear her voice in my head. Laughing at me. Blaming me for what she did, through her tricks."

Serving as Page's partner in crime Kristine Nielsen as Sladjana, his housekeeper, distinguished by a blazing hatred of cats and weird culinary notions. (These two facts are not unrelated.) Throughout the first act, she does her master's bidding, playing the good and faithful servant with her trademark fluttery, modern-dance hand gestures and that voice that can drop several octaves at a second's notice. In the second act, however, Sladjana practices her own form of subversion, subtly urging the young men to abandon their mission for the sake of life's ordinary pleasures. Page and Nielsen are such practiced scene-stealers, and Joseph has supplied them with so many passages of comically overripe writing that Jake Berne, Adrien Rolet, and Jason Sanchez tend to blur into a trio of indiscriminate personalities. (Sanchez at least makes the most of Nedeljko's show-stopping description of sexual intercourse.) The script is at its weakest when invoking their almost terminal naivete, including their crippling fear of the female skeleton they viewed in their doctor's office; the playwright feels on firmer ground with Apis and Sladjana.

Still, there's a method behind this eccentric framing of history; Joseph is interested in the means by which aimless, often frightened, young men can be made to embrace poisonous ideologies, a scenario that has repeated itself too often in the last hundred years or so. Archduke comes with faint echoes of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, with its feeble supporting cast of anarchists and a bombing that goes terribly wrong. It also calls to mind Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which comically portrays terrorism as the last resort of fools and idiots. It's a message that continues to resonate uncomfortably in today's world of Groypers and QAnon shamans.

Darko Tresnjak's production, which catches the script's alternating moods of tension, dark fantasy, and knockabout comedy, also features a first-rate production design. Scenic designer Alexander Dodge deploys a turntable to deliver an abandoned warehouse, a dining room, a chapel, and a bedroom bedecked with religious icons, all framed by an enormous map of Middle Europe before the war. Matthew Richards' lighting sets the tone for each new setting, most notably providing a flood of early morning sunshine through the chapel window. Linda Cho's costumes are vividly detailed and suitable for both character and period. Jane Shaw's sound design includes a variety of scene-setting effects (ship's horn, bird wings, a church bell) plus martial music.

Archduke climaxes with the young men on a train, bound for what they have been told is glory, yet hesitating over what happens next. "It would be nice to be forgotten," one of them says. But their names are the giveaway: The trio includes Nedeljko Cabrinovic and Gavrilo Princip, who, acting for their country, set off a chain reaction that brought a continent to its knees, resulting in the slaughter of millions. This is the unspoken thought lurking behind the play's amusingly overwrought action: It only takes one or two deluded men to make a civilization come crashing down. It has happened more times than one wants to admit, and the threat of it remains omnipresent. In any case, a visit to Joseph's capacious imagination is well worth it. --David Barbour