Michael Stuhlbarg and Will Keen to Lead Peter Morgan’s Political Play Patriots on Broadway

Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg, last seen on Broadway nearly 20 years ago in Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, will lead Peter Morgan’s Olivier Award-nominated play Patriots on Broadway this spring. Directed by two-time Tony Award nominee Rupert Goold, Patriots will have a strictly limited 12-week engagement, beginning previews at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on April 1 and opening April 22.

Patriots had a limited West End run in 2023 following its successful world premiere at the Almeida Theatre in London. Set in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, the play follows billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky (Stuhlbarg), who, in search of a successor to President Boris Yeltsin, turns to the little-known deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin. Soon, Putin’s ruthless rise threatens Berezovsky’s reign, setting off a confrontation between the two fatally flawed men.

The Crown alum Will Keen will reprise his Olivier Award-winning performance as Vladimir Putin, while Stuhlbarg takes over the role originated on the West End by Tony and Olivier Award nominee Tom Hollander. The Broadway cast will also feature original London cast member Luke Thallon as Russian oligarch and politician Roman Abramovich. Additional casting will be announced in the coming weeks.

Stuhlbarg is best known for his breakout role in Joel and Ethan Coen's 2009 film A Serious Man. His other film credits include Arrival, Seven Psychopaths, Lincoln, Blue Jasmine, Steve Jobs, Doctor Strange, Call Me By Your Name, The Post and The Shape of Water, among others. He also earned Emmy Award nominations for his television performances in Dopesick and The Looming Tower.

Morgan is the creator of Netflix’s Emmy Award-winning The Crown, and was last represented on Broadway in 2015 with his play The Audience, starring Helen Mirren in her Tony Award-winning role as Queen Elizabeth II. He made his Broadway debut in 2007 with his Tony Award-nominated play Frost/Nixon, later adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film.

"For 20 years, Peter Morgan has pioneered a new mode of storytelling to illuminate our world," commented producer Sonia Friedman. "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. 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."

The creative team for Patriots features three-time Tony Award-nominated set designer Miriam Buether, co-costume designers Deborah Andrews and Miriam Buether, lighting designer Jack Knowles, Tony Award-winning sound designer and composer Adam Cork, movement director Polly Bennett and projection designer Ash J Woodward.