{"id":1054614,"date":"2026-06-28T01:49:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T01:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1054614\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T01:49:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T01:49:16","slug":"archduke-royal-court-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1054614\/","title":{"rendered":"Archduke \u2013 Royal Court, London"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>Writer: Rajiv Joseph<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director: Lyndsey Turner<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are all getting increasingly jittery about large-scale international conflict. So Rajiv Joseph\u2019s play about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand \u2013 which is supposed to have triggered World War One \u2013 should feel timely. Instead, it comes across as an annoying piece of trivialisation with little new or interesting to say.<\/p>\n

Three easily exploitable young men are lured by a batshit crazy Serbian army captain into assassinating the Archduke and his wife (who are as absent from this play as Godot is from Beckett\u2019s). The captain has a range of levers to pull, including fantasies of patriotic glory and providing rich food to these hungry and desperate boys with no prospects. They are not the sharpest tools in the box and don\u2019t question his evidence when he tells them that they can exact vengeance on the Archduke who is to blame for the tuberculosis that is going to kill them anyway sometime over the next 12 twelve months.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see why the Royal Court wanted to lighten up after the earnestness of the Featherstone era. But Joseph\u2019s Tarantino-lite dialogue and feeble banter aren\u2019t dark, funny, or sharp enough to make an impression. Martin McDonagh could do better than this, even on a bad day. And the message \u2013 that the privileged and wealthy have been duping the underclass into doing their dirty work for them since time immemorial \u2013 is hardly an original one, even though it still resonates. The only people likely to be disturbed or shocked by this play are cat lovers.<\/p>\n

That said, the Royal Court do the play proud. Es Devlin\u2019s set, with its resemblance to the connecting pedestrian tunnels at London Bridge and a railway carriage that outclasses the Orient Express, is superb. And the performers do all that they can with Rajiv Joseph\u2019s uninspiring dialogue. Marc Wootton\u2019s Dragutin \u201cApis\u201d Dimitrijevic has the meatiest role and makes the most of it.\u00a0 It is disappointing to discover that the character\u2019s penchant for dismemberment and ability to function with three bullets lodged in his chest after a previous assassination attempt are not the result of Joseph\u2019s creative imagination but his research.<\/p>\n

Janice Connolly makes the most of cook Sladjana, whose cherries in brandy contain a surprise, but can\u2019t do anything about the role being the worst kind of stereotype. Chris Walley, Abraham Popoola, and Stanley Morgan are lumbered with the least interesting dialogue. Nothing is made of the fact that they are students, and they come across as a collection of international everyman figures: one is Black, one is Irish, and none of them seems very\u00a0 Balkan \u2013 the point being made that their fates happen to many young people all over the world and throughout history. They make for a good ensemble and touchingly convey how young, vulnerable and exploitable they all are \u2013 it\u2019s just a shame that they didn\u2019t have better material.<\/p>\n

Runs until 25 July 2026 <\/strong><\/p>\n

\t\t\tThe Reviews Hub Star Rating <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t40%<\/p>\n

\t\t\tAll whimper and no bang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0Writer: Rajiv Joseph Director: Lyndsey Turner We are all getting increasingly jittery about large-scale international conflict. So Rajiv…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1054615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[289690,289691,748,289692,393,13238,4884,289693,257,236537,289694,195675,6080,150732,289695,2764,16,15],"class_list":["post-1054614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-abraham-popoola","tag-archduke","tag-britain","tag-chris-walley","tag-england","tag-es-devlin","tag-great-britain","tag-janice-connolly","tag-london","tag-lyndsey-turner","tag-marc-wooton","tag-rajiv-joseph","tag-review","tag-royal-court","tag-stanley-morgan","tag-theatre","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116825224884945348","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1054615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}