In 2020, I wondered if Michael Stuhlbarg was “the most underrated actor alive.” Four years later, that question no longer applies, given that the 55-year-old artist has just been nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his breathtaking performance in Patriots.
A ripped-from-recent-history play from The Crown mastermind Peter Morgan, it features Stuhlbarg as Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who amassed a fortune (and attendant power) in his native Russia during the heyday of Boris Yeltsin, and then aided the ascent of Vladimir Putin (Will Keen) to the president’s office, only to unexpectedly run afoul of the authoritarian. As the ambitious and idealistic businessman, Stuhlbarg is a larger-than-life marvel, capturing—with every cunning smile and imposing outburst—both the virtue and vice of the mathematician-turned-billionaire. A masterclass of showmanship that sympathizes Berezovsky without letting him off the hook for his personal shortcomings and strategic failures, it’s a tour de force that’s rightly earned raves since the production debuted stateside on April 22.
A portrait of that brief turning point in Russian history when Berezovsky and his free market-loving ilk took advantage of their new liberal environment to become personally wealthy as well as to push the country toward a new, more harmonious relationship with the West, Patriots is a lament for an opportunity lost, and a sharp and timely look at the ways in which autocracies emerge—or, in Russia’s case, re-emerge. Those themes are all embodied in the figure of Berezovsky, and it’s a tribute to Stuhlbarg’s immense talent that—paired with the excellent Keen as Putin—he brings them to life through formidable force of personality.
