Sharply dressed in service uniform, the actor Patrick Page steps in front of a giant map of Central Europe, ready to outline his attack plan, and you’re ready to fight. In this New York premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s 2017 play, “Archduke,” Page’s command of language — his absolute certainty — makes whatever he’s saying irresistible.
Never mind that, as the Serbian nationalist Dragutin Dimitrijevic, he’s radicalizing three aimless young men into carrying out a hit on Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian royal whose 1914 assassination prompted the First World War. Or that we’ve just spent the better part of an hour learning about the individual neuroses of this handsome mopheaded group, while Page’s character remains a mystery. Under such a spell as his, it’s easy to nod along.
It’s Page’s appearance, and Darko Tresnjak’s masterful direction for this Roundabout Theater Company production, that best realize Joseph’s fitfully engaging concept by turning it into a high-stakes artistic gambit: Like those young men, how much are we willing to meander (in life or at a play) in the search for meaning?
Joseph’s work here is often very fine, but before Page’s imperious arrival — a tableau comparable to that indelible image of George C. Scott and the American flag in the film “Patton” — the piece leisurely depicts how his new footmen first came together. The lack of urgency is the point, but it also creates some audience impatience.
Under cover of night, Nedeljko (Jason Sanchez) stumbles upon Gavrilo (Jake Berne) in a dark, barrel-lined cellar. (The set designer Alexander Dodge fills the turntable stage with constant visual wonders under Matthew Richards’s tenebrous lighting.) They circle around each other, coyly revealing they were both led here by a doctor who diagnosed them with tuberculosis. The doc was sketchy, but he did it for free, and promised each man they’d meet someone who’d give their lives meaning at this spot. What did they have to lose?
The subject of sex comes up for the inexperienced 19-year-olds, amid banter that betrays existential insecurity in uncertain times. Ingeniously, Tresnjak seizes the opportunity to crystallize a roiling undercurrent of homosociality that runs through Joseph’s play. There’s nothing explicit — that’s sociality, not sexuality — but it lays bare the similarities between flirting, posturing, yearning and boasting. What Joseph has written as a political farce, Tresnjak stages as psychosexual tragicomedy.
The director has his fun, though. When a third, slightly older man named Trifko (Adrien Rolet) arrives, he’s sporting a Tom of Finland mustache in what slyly feels like a standard porn setup. Instead he takes the other two to meet a mysterious figure: Page’s covert operative Dimitrijevic, nicknamed Apis, whom the actor renders as a delicious amalgamation of every snarling, queer-coded Disney villain. (Linda Cho designed his cinched uniform.) Back at his lair, he chews up every word of his sociopolitical screed as the boys gorge themselves on an elaborate feast prepared by his assistant Sladjana (Kristine Nielsen, hilarious but underused).
The young trio are comically deaf to his evil, poetic bombast, and Apis is forced to tease out their complicity, arduously and absurdly. It’s his dangling of potential approval, of any form of purpose, that clinches them. (Under Tresnjak’s direction, Apis’s constant talk of “my boys” stokes an erotic flare.) Nedeljko’s final take on the matter? “Unification. And a sandwich. And being with a woman. All three things interest me in different ways.”
Page is so convincing, and the staging of his soon-to-be accomplices with their backs to us, completely anonymized, so ingenuous, that “Archduke” briefly reaches a dizzying marriage of form and content.
Then the first act ends, and after the intermission, well, it’s more of the same ambling dialogue, with bits of sociological insight strewed throughout, even as the boys begin their fateful journey to Sarajevo.
The play’s casually comic back-and-forths display Joseph’s incredible ear for dialogue, his way of weaving personal revelations into everyday speech. And this is hardly a bad crew to be stuck with. The young actors are strong matches for Page and Nielsen’s expert performances, as comfortable playing their foils as they are attuned to how their characters’ profound loneliness leads to an eagerness to please.
But without a sturdier through line — and though their story inevitably ends in war, it’s mostly played for dark laughs — “Archduke” starts feeling like more of the same, going nowhere and adding nothing. Where’s that forceful hand when you need it?
Archduke
Through Dec. 21 at Laura Pels Theater in Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 2 hours.
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