“Archduke”

Rajiv Joseph

One gun shot and its hapless, men-still-boys perpetrators are the unlikely subjects of a laugh-out-loud retelling of one of history’s darkest moments – World War I’s initiating assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand.  Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph explores in his 2017, premiering Archduke – a play that was the hit of TheatreWorks’s 2016 New Works Festival – how that one shot that changed everything forever had such ridiculously tragic beginnings.  In doing so, the play that premiered in Los Angeles’ Taper Forum and has now been re-worked by the playwright for its opening at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley also lays bare some of the same tragi-comedy aspects of how in our present world, the disenfranchised can be so easily marginalized and neglected to the point they become vulnerable for the most horrible of deeds.

Please continue to Talkin’ Broadway for my complete review: https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj168.html.

Rating: 4.5 E

Archduke continues through June 20, 2019 at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street, Mountain View.  Tickets are available online at http://www.theatreworks.org/box-office/ or by calling 650-463-1960, Monday – Friday 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturday – Sunday, Noon – 6 p.m.