What drives three men to spark the chain of events which catalyses World War One? It turns out, largely, their empty stomachs, in this fun, delightfully dark farce from Rajiv Joseph.
Set almost exclusively in the secret tunnels and hideouts of Belgrade, Archduke centres upon three men, each with their own economic despairs and health woes, coerced into the 1914 murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by an increasingly barmy ‘Captain’.
At the fore of the comedy is Gavrilo Princip (Stanley Morgan), a young Bosnian Serb who is riddled with lung disease and desperate for food. Morgan’s character is based on the real-life assassin of the Archduke, yet here in Joseph’s version the character takes on an initially hapless, naive role, whose head is slowly radicalised by ‘Captain’ Dragutin Dimitrijevic’s (Marc Wootton) furious jingoist ideology. Gavrilo’s interactions with bolshy Nedeljko (Chris Walley) neatly compound this, bursting into life during the play’s exposition as the pair grapples in a goofy slapstick routine that sets the tone for the play’s absurd take on one of history’s crucial moments.
The piece kicks on, however, with the arrival of the bomb-wielding Trifko (Abraham Popoola), which garners the comedy’s first big laugh. Trifko stands, at first glance, as a henchman coming to ‘deal’ with the inadequate two recruits, but this role softens into one of the chaotic trio once the Captain arrives.
Indeed, it is only once Wootton’s outrageous army officer arrives that the comedy ramps up. Wootton is, simply put, an absolute delight here, on top form, prancing and strutting the stage with a rampant fury that collides with a complete sense of delusion, urging the three to rise against the establishment and take what he believes is their right. It is a full-force portrayal, and one that is utterly captivating, brimming with sharp vocal delivery and a comedic physicality that reiterates the character’s sense of mania, scrambled in Serbian tunnels plotting the downfall of the aristocracy, and seemingly also spurred on by professional jealousy at the success of other extremist groups.
The Captain also has, in tow, cook Sladjana (Janice Connolly), whose culinary delights mesmerise and intoxicate just as strongly as the Captain’s violent rhetoric. Connolly’s comic timing is slick here, from relentlessly demanding she is able to serve pudding, much to her superior’s frustration, through to a particularly dark, feline-focused scene in the chapel. It is an understated performance, but once that lands Joseph’s absurdist comedy with ease.
Joseph’s play, and Lyndsey Turner’s direction, is bolstered by Es Devlin’s eye-catching design. Characters spend the majority of the work in the hollowed-out tunnels, a combination of rock and metal that reiterates the underground, hidden nature of the plotting. But this is then contrasted much later to the lavish train carriage which the trio take to complete their mission, gorgeously furnished and emphasising the promise of riches, or perhaps the life the men would rather have had than the mercenary mission they find themselves on.
It is a comedy which ends rather abruptly, an inevitable complication given its true-story inspiration, yet within the outlandish comedy lingers a much darker message about masculinity, health and ideology. While the absurdity of the characters, whose lives existed over a century ago, may not be so recognisable, the emotive, corrupting rhetoric which sweeps up the trio, all about protecting their borders and preserving their nationhood, feels remarkably pertinent today.
