A play about Putin will be released on Broadway

Will Keane as Putin

Marc Brenner

A play will be staged in New York, on Broadway “Patriots” about the Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin. A performance based on a play by the creator of the popular TV series “The Crown” Peter Morgan produced by the styrigny giant Netflix.

For his Broadway debut, writes Variety, Netflix picked up a show set after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Then the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky helped organize the coming to power of Putin’s future aggressor. Then the billionaire became a fierce critic of the Russian president and died in London under unknown circumstances.

The play “Patriots” was released in the spring of 2022 at the Almeida Theater in London. ““Dear Mr. Berezovsky,” says the aloof, ferret-like Putin at first, “one would have to live on another planet to not know you!” But Putin soon changed his tune and his tone, rising from prime minister to president and consolidating power around himself“, she wrote The New York Times after the London premiere.

At the same time, the author noted that putting on a play about Putin at the beginning of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine was a “brave” decision: “In the days following the start of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, orchestras, concert halls and opera houses removed Russian works from their stages, and it looked as if Russian repertoire could no longer be performed in the West.“.

Now the play is being moved to New York. The premiere is scheduled for April 22, and the play will run at the Ethel Barrymore Theater for 12 weeks.

Putin and another Russian oligarch – Roman Abramovich – will be played by the same actors as in London: Will Keane and Luke Tallon. Berezovsky – Tony Award nominee and actor from the films “The Shape of Water”, “Arrival”, “Men in Black 3” Michael Stuhlbarg.

It was for the role of the Russian dictator Putin in 2023 that Keane received the Laurence Olivier Award – the most prestigious theater award in Great Britain. From the stage, the actor noted that he played “the role of a living, breathing, internationally recognized criminal“.

Almost two years ago, after the London premiere, Variety called the play “an extremely timely effort” which uses “the rise and fall of Berezovsky to illustrate the internally sanctified, externally emptied state of Russian political culture“.