Writer: Rajiv Joseph
Director: Lyndsey Turner
We are all getting increasingly jittery about large-scale international conflict. So Rajiv Joseph’s play about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand – which is supposed to have triggered World War One – should feel timely. Instead, it comes across as an annoying piece of trivialisation with little new or interesting to say.
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’s). 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’t 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.
It’s easy to see why the Royal Court wanted to lighten up after the earnestness of the Featherstone era. But Joseph’s Tarantino-lite dialogue and feeble banter aren’t dark, funny, or sharp enough to make an impression. Martin McDonagh could do better than this, even on a bad day. And the message – that the privileged and wealthy have been duping the underclass into doing their dirty work for them since time immemorial – 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.
That said, the Royal Court do the play proud. Es Devlin’s 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’s uninspiring dialogue. Marc Wootton’s Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic has the meatiest role and makes the most of it. It is disappointing to discover that the character’s 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’s creative imagination but his research.
Janice Connolly makes the most of cook Sladjana, whose cherries in brandy contain a surprise, but can’t 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 Balkan – 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 – it’s just a shame that they didn’t have better material.
Runs until 25 July 2026
