Archduke at Royal Court Theatre

Last Updated on June 27, 2026

A spellbinding dissection of political violence

5.0 out of 5.0 stars

Rajiv Joseph’s Archduke premiered in Los Angeles in 2017. In the last two years, it’s been re-staged in Britain and America three times. This is no coincidence; there are few works that bite so precisely into the fault lines of strongman politics and restless masculinity. This is a historical play with contemporary punch.

Belgrade, 1914. Our protagonists have been sent to meet ‘a guy’ in an underground bunker. Chris Walley (The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Young Offenders), Stanley Morgan (The Little Foxes) and Abraham Popoola (Shiver) are impoverished young men with TB, slipping into the criminal underworld in exchange for medical attention from a crooked doctor. They are witty, lovable rogues reminiscent of Shakespeare’s best comedic fools (Feste in Twelfth Night or Touchstone in As You Like It), but their concerns are serious (sex, family, purpose). As they are groomed into violence, despair is our prevailing feeling. These are starving boys let down by Society and State.

The trio are led to their captain, Dragutin Dimitrijević (nicknamed Apis), a Serbian army officer responsible for plotting the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. We also meet Sladjana (Janice Connolly – Phoenix Nights), Apis’s cook – a mysterious, world-weary sage intent on diverting the boys’ murderous assignment.

From here, the play grows into a study of indoctrination, rhetoric and false promises. Lyndsey Turner (The Crucible, 1536) directs a series of initiation speeches and role plays whereby the boys are brutalised, and Gavrilo is selected as the most pliable militant. Archduke is smart in how it distils the build-up to an assassination into a campaign of playground bullying. It is not a linear tale of street boys-turned-strongmen, but an exposition of the hollow logic of terroristic martyrdom.

Olivier Award-winning Chris Walley sparkles as Nedeljko, blending slapstick physicality, crisp one-liners and deep tenderness. His humour sucks the audience in from the first beat. Stanley Morgan is sharp as Gavrilo, ascending from sensitive adolescent to confused militant. We root for his quiet wisdom as it’s twisted out of shape. Abraham Popoola’s comedic timing lights up the action – his arrival in the first scene inaugurates a comedy trio that is the beating heart of Joseph’s script. And Janice Connolly gives a poignant portrayal of a woman secretly resisting masculine domination.

Yet it is Mark Wootten’s performance as Apis that turns Archduke into a social commentary of the highest calibre. Lyndsey Turner directs him as a half-ironic buffoon and half-formidable predator. His comedy slips easily under the skin, only to double back into aggressive punches (“do not let a woman erase the man you have become”). There’s something Trumpian in Apis’s mixture of showbiz patter and self-serious proclamations. “Reclaim your mind” is his mantra – a familiar tagline of what is today called the manosphere. It’s Wootten’s performance that locks Archduke into these contemporary resonances.

Brilliance extends to the design, too. Es Devlin (The Lehman Trilogy) delivers dynamic sets that drive the drama. The audience gasps when a moving train carriage shunts onto the stage after the interval. And the underground bunker – which recalls a London tube tunnel – augments connections to the contemporary world. The stark lighting and sudden bursts from steam generators create the feeling of blindly falling towards catastrophe.

Watching Archduke is like waiting for an explosive to detonate. Indeed, the set, with its curved ceiling and metal walls, feels like the inside of a bomb. It’s a play that interprets a defining moment in world history as a messy assortment of grudges, misogyny and the myths of masculine glory. At its core, it’s about male desperation. If there’s hope in the play, it comes from the open hearts of its young boys and the possibilities for alternative choices. It’s fearless, tightly crafted theatre that sticks in the mind.

Archduke runs at the Royal Court from Friday, 26 June to Saturday, 25 July.

Royal Court Theatre

Sloane Square,
Chelsea
London
SW1W 8AS

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