Archduke

By: Darryl Reilly

“I have wasted my life…Everything you say to me makes me feel sad” says one 19-year-old youth to another 19-year-old youth who are both suffering from tuberculosis in Pulitzer-Prize finalist playwright Rajiv Joseph’s historical black comedy Archduke.

This duo are at a Serbian dockyard warehouse in 1914 to meet a man about a job. They are eventually joined by a third consumptive young man; Beckettian banter abounds. Their unseen doctor is in cahoots with a crusty, shadowy, and nefarious elder Serbian colonel who aims to recruit them to assassinate Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and then take cyanide as they are already dying. He boasts of having disemboweled the King and Queen of Serbia some years earlier. His machinations are for the unification and betterment of the nation with the existential enticement that these doomed lower-class young men will be remembered as folk heroes rather than dying in obscurity. Of course, the Archduke really was assassinated in 1914 causing W.W. I.

Mr. Joseph’s intriguing and heartbreaking scenario combines fact and fiction with robust dramatic writing which contains shades of Tom Stoppard’s wordplay and humaneness. However, the possibility for theatrical achievement here is undermined by a two-act structure where momentum sags with an intermission, directorial intrusiveness, and an overblown production.

The sunny trio of Jake Berne, Adrien Rolet, and Jason Sanchez are all magnetic and offer lively and poignant portrayals of the virginal young men. A highlight of their camaraderie is seriously pondering together a possible timeframe and what they can pawn in order to visit and pay a female sex worker before they commit murder and suicide. These performances are Archduke’s most successful element.

New York stage veteran Patrick Page is in overdrive as the colonel. Employing an Eastern European accent, Mr. Page utilizes his trademark rumbling deep voice and limber physicality to maximum effect. As the colonel’s loony cook Kristine Nielsen is in a whirlwind while displaying her familiar mugging, gesticulating, and double takes. Ms. Nielsen icily delivers chilling speeches about how cats are evil and the need to kill them. Most eerie is her description of killing kittens and putting their tiny pink hearts in a jar of brandy and eating those like cherries. Page and Nielsen are acclaimed and admired performing artists with their distinctive traits. Arguably they’re overdoing it in Archduke.

Perhaps this questionable emotiveness is director Darko Tresnjak’s desire. Mr. Tresnjak won a Tony Award for directing the hit musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder in 2014 and has staged classical plays and operas. Debatably, Tresnjak’s vision for Archduke is of exaggeration, busyness, and grand stagecraft which overwhelms the play’s potential.

A glorious vintage map of Europe used as the stage’s back wall, a barrel-filled warehouse, and a lavish dining room with a table laden with delicacies are the initial optically pleasing settings crafted by scenic designer Alexander Dodge. In the second act Mr. Dodge relies on a turntable to transport the actions to a bedroom, a church and a train. Each setting is overly elaborate which also distracts from the narrative. Matthew Richards’ lighting design and Jane Shaw’s sound design are both hyped up. Fight director Rocio Mendez creates some fierce sequences particularly when one of the young men injures his arm during a scuffle. Linda Cho’s period-style costume design is impeccable and authentic.

This fitfully entertaining New York premiere production of Archduke reveals it to be slight, good-natured, and ultimately unsatisfying.

Archduke (through December 21, 2025)
Roundabout Theatre Company
Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, visit www.roundabouttheatre.org
Running time: two hours including one intermission