“Archduke” – A What-If Alternative to History Changing Assassination

By Alix Cohen

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia by Gavrilo Princip, a a 19-year-old member of the nationalist group Black Hand, which sought independence for Slavic peoples under Austro-Hungarian rule. The act triggered a chain of events that led to World War I. Earlier that day, another conspirator threw a bomb at the Archduke’s motorcade, injuring bystanders but missing the target. Later, by chance, Princip spotted the couple’s car stalled near a café and fatally shot both of them.

In playwright Rajiv Joseph’s ever fertile imagination, Gavrilo (Jake Berne) and Trifko (Adrien Rolet) two uneducated, 19 year old strangers living hand to mouth, are surreptitiously recruited by their joint tuberculosis doctor. The first is sent to a clandestine meeting with hopes of finding meaning in life, the second in anticipation of paying work.

Rolet is good, Berne excellent. As innocent young men, eventually having to decide between a sandwich (a repeating joke of basic sustenance), a woman (they’re all virgins), or legendary status, they’re credible loose cannons, reacting like pinballs.

Collected by Nedeljko (Jason Sanchez) a third ill young man (yeoman like performance) the pair are eventually (parrying goes on too long) brought to the lavish home of Captain Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic (Patrick Page) with promise of food. The officer considers himself a patriot. He takes credit for assassinating (disemboweling) King Alexander of Yugoslavia and his “harlot” wife. “It was the achievement of my life.”*

Saddled with an indecisive director and perhaps playwright, Page shows not his usual, formidable craft, but rather a character with one foot in pompous self righteousness and one as a cartoon.

The Captain’s ditsy, housekeeper/cook, Sladjana (Kristine Nielsen) lays quite a spread. That it’s obviously plastic does not work to further Joseph’s ostensibly farcical take. Sladjana is a fluttering caricature who delights in murdering and cutting open cats. There’s more than a dash of Grand-Guignol in this play. Nielsen is not funny.

The malleable boys are offered a choice of fate: they might be captured by police, die forgotten, or assassinate Duke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, achieving such legacy that children will sing about them. The best assassin is one who has nothing to lose.
“Do you feel the suffocating grip of Austro-Hungary?!” the Captain rhetorically declares. Their collective illness is blamed on politics. A boring history lesson of the area follows.

Gabrilo, Trifko, and Nedeljko are apparently convinced and suitably outfitted. Taking a train for the first time is not the least of the assignment’s attractions. Interaction during this parenthesis is the best in the piece. Will they do it?

The premise is auspicious, dialogue among the young men often emerges with distinctive syntax and naiveté resembling that of a Wes Anderson film. Unlike Rajiv Joseph’s earlier work, however, neither overall approach nor intention is ever clear. Director Darko Tresnjak mixes satire with clownishness and plausibility. In the end, it doesn’t work.

Alexander Dodge’s revolving Set Design works well in each iteration.
Costumes by Linda Cho are realistic except for that of Sladjana who looks like someone out of a folkloric children’s book.
Fight Director Rocio Mendez makes angry fisticuffs look wimpy.

*In fact, King Alexander King Alexander I was assassinated 1934, in Marseille, France, by a Bulgarian revolutionary in collaboration with Croatian extremists

Photos by Joan Marcus
Opening: (l to r) Patrick Page (Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic), Jason Sanchez (Nedeljko), Adrien Rolet (Trifko),
Jake Berne (Gavrilo), Kristine Nielsen (Sladjana)

Roundabout Theatre Company presents
Archduke by Rajiv Joseph
Directed by Darko Tresnjak
Through December 21, 2025
The Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street).
https://www.roundabouttheatre.org/