Archduke review – twisted history goes to war for a sandwich

Royal Court Downstairs, London
Hunger and TB, as much as imperialism, are triggers for the assassination that precipitated the first world war in Rajiv Joseph’s tragicomic reimagining of the plotters’ progress

Most of us have written an essay on the origins of the first world war, exam-cramming the names of Bosnian Serb teenager Gavrilo Princip and his victims – Austrian-Hungarian heir Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie – in Sarajevo almost exactly 112 years ago. A textbook answer is that their assassinations militarised Europe.

However, a student who answered a question on the origins of the 1914-18 conflict with the farcical speculation in Rajiv Joseph’s 2025 play Archduke might face a retake. Unemployed and diagnosed as a “lunger” (consumptive), Princip (Stanley Morgan) receives a “job” offer from Apis (Marc Wootton), a Slav nationalist who recruits Gavrilo and two other starving sick youths, Trifco (Abraham Popoola) and Nedeljko (Chris Walley), by filling their minds with a rant on historical wrongs and their bellies with the menus of his devout housekeeper, Sladjana (Janice Connolly). The lungers’ hunger is a major motivation, a recurring metaphor involving fancy sandwiches.