‘If I had to choose between being known while alive or being known while dead, I gotta go with dead,” says Gavrilo, the teenager who will soon assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and start World War I. “Cause I’ll be dead forever. So that means: Remembered forever.”
But few in the audience “Archduke,” a play by Rajiv Joseph opening tonight at Roundabout’s Laura Pels theater, will have remembered the name Gavrilo Princip — or that of his co-conspirators, or know much about the complicated geopolitics that turned them into killers. Joseph is banking on our ignorance, because he has used the historical event to create an absurd black comedy that is neither historically accurate nor especially illuminating. And, despite a stellar cast including Patrick Page and Kristine Nielsen, the production is not even all that funny.
Gavrilo (Jake Berne) is one of three young men who are dying of tuberculosis, recruited to become “martyrs for Slavic Unification.” Their commander is Dragutin ‘Apis’ Dimitrijevic (Patrick Page), a military officer whose convoluted explanation of the volatile politics of the time and place – in front of a map of the Austro-Hungarian empire — would confuse the audience if it weren’t so easy for us to tune it out. Far clearer, unfortunately, is the story that he repeats in increasingly graphic detail of the time he disemboweled King Alexander I and Queen Draga of Serbia.
“Who here knows what disemboweled means?” Apis asks his recruits.
“Accidental defecation,” says Nedeljko (Jason Sanchez)
“No that’s wrong. Trifko.”
“To cut up someone’s insides,” says Triko (Adrien Rolet)
“Exactly right.”
It is a historical fact that five of the six young men involved in the assassination were under the age of 20. But the characters Joseph has created act more like feeble-minded children, induced into murder by the promise of a black pair of gloves, or a sandwich. If the point of the play is how easily young men are seduced into violence, this becomes muddled by a surfeit of anything-for-a-laugh vaudevillian touches. At one point, Gavrilo asks Nedeljko whether he has ever had sex; Nedeljko lies and says yes; Gavrilo asks him what it was like. “It’s like taking a bath with a bunch of rabbits…Feels soft and warm but also, ‘what am I doing here?’” There are moments of slapstick that feel inspired by the Three Stooges, and bickering that sounds like an underage Abbott and Costello routine.
The mix of gore and guffaws is somewhat reminiscent of Joseph’s 2015 play “Guards at the Taj,” which I said at the time was like Abbott and Costello Meets Game of Thrones. It was a disappointing follow-up to Joseph’s 2011 surreal but pointed Broadway play, “Bengal Tiger at the Bagdad Zoo,” starring Robin Williams in the title role.
Under the direction of Darko Tresnjak (best-known for helming A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder) “Archduke” is getting a distinctly professional production – precise design, game cast — for a play that was first produced in 2017 in Los Angeles as a commission of Center Theater Group, and didn’t need to be revived. Joseph has written better plays before and since.
Archduke
Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater through December 21, 2025
Running time: 2 hours, including a 15-minute intermission.
Tickets: $69 – $144
Written by Rajiv Joseph
Directed by Darko Tresnjak
Scenic design by Alexander Dodge, costume design by Linda Cho, lighting design by Matthew Richards, sound by Jane Shaw, hair, wig and makeup by Tom Watson, fight direction by Rocio Mendez
Cast:Jake Berne as Gavrilo, Kristine Nielsen as Sladjana, Adrien Rolet as Trifko,Jason Sanchez as Nedeljko and Patrick Page as Dragutin ‘Apis’ Dimitrijevic. Understudies: Celeste Ciulla, Tom Holcomb, Evan Paul Silverstein
Photos by Joan Marcus
