Michael Stuhlbarg To Star In PATRIOTS, A New Play Coming To Broadway This Spring

Award-winning theatre, film, and television actor Michael Stuhlbarg will return to Broadway for the first time in almost 20 years to star in Patriots, the Almeida Theatre production of the shockingly timely new play by Peter Morgan, creator of “The Crown.” 

Directed by Almeida Artistic Director Rupert Goold, Patriots will begin Previews April 1st, 2024 and will open April 22nd, 2024 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. 

Patriots, which critics have called “topical and terrifying” (Air Mail), is about billionaire Boris Berezovsky, the kingmaker behind Vladimir Putin’s chilling rise to power. Original London cast member Will Keen will recreate his mesmerizing Olivier Award-winning performance as Vladimir Putin. 

Patriots, which won the 2023 Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play, comes to Broadway following a record-breaking run at London’s Almeida Theatre where it was the fastest-selling new play in the theatre’s history, and a sold out 12-week run in the West End at the Noël Coward Theatre, where it recouped its investment.

In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the new Russia belongs to its oligarchs – and no one is more powerful than billionaire Boris Berezovsky (Stuhlbarg). “If the politicians cannot save Russia,” he insists, “then we businessmen must.” When an eventual successor to President Boris Yeltsin is needed, Berezovsky turns to the little-known deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin (Keen). But soon Putin’s ruthless rise threatens Berezovsky’s reign, setting off a riveting, near-Shakespearean confrontation between the two powerful, fatally flawed men.

Patriots will also feature original London cast member Luke Thallon as Russian oligarch and politician Roman Abramovich. Additional casting will be announced in coming weeks.

“For 20 years, Peter Morgan has pioneered a new mode of storytelling to illuminate our world. No other writer wrings so much human drama out of historical events, but Patriots is his most urgent and essential play to date – an incisive deep-dive into 30 years of Russia’s past in search of its horrifying and harrowing present, something that should concern us all,” commented Sonia Friedman. “Its London premiere at the Almeida and in the West End repeatedly seemed to reflect that day’s headlines and, with the world at a crossroads in 2024, it feels more immediate than ever. We are so fortunate that one of America’s greatest actors, Michael Stuhlbarg, will join us to play Boris Berezovsky, with Will Keen recreating his Olivier Award-winning role as Vladimir Putin, and that Broadway audiences will get to experience Rupert Goold’s exhilarating production for themselves.”  

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