Patriots

PATRIOT … and a dictator is born. The world expected President Yeltsin to bring freedom and democracy to Russia. Instead, he ended up as an infirm drunkard and a puppet in the hands of filthy rich businessmen known as oligarchs. Now, as his second term in office is coming to an end, trials for corruption are looming above him as well as above the oligarchs. If the latter want to save themselves and their profitable businesses, they must act quickly to find a suitable successor to Yeltsin. Someone who would be easy to manipulate, someone capable of shielding them from criminal prosecution. Boris Berezovsky, a media mogul and the most powerful Russian oligarch, believes to have found the right man for the job: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Before long, Berezovsky accomplishes the impossible; in just a few months, the unknown head of the secret police becomes the country’s Prime Minister, and soon after that the President. However, Berezovsky quickly finds out how wrong he was about Putin. The man who was intended to be a puppet in his hands, longs to seize unlimited power not only over Russia, but all Eastern Europe, and he ruthlessly removes anyone standing in his way to power. Berezovsky finds himself in the position of an improbable hero: no one else can protect the budding Russian democracy from Putin. Together with the former secret agent Litvinenko, who holds proof of Putin’s abusive practices, they strive to warn the Russian people as well as Western countries about the ascending dictator.

The production at NT Brno shows the raw reality of post-Soviet monstrous machinations, reminding us that the mafia methods of the Russian oligarchs are deeply rooted in the moral void of the communist regime. It also reminds us that it is these men who bear the ultimate responsibility for the fact that Russia is now ruled by a capricious dictator threatening the whole world. The Czech audience will easily see the local parallels of Berezovsky, Abramovich and other thugs, perhaps tamer, but equally good at embezzling public money. In any case, Morgan demythologizes Putin and composes a narrative about a genius of mediocrity, which clearly shows that rather than Russia falling victim to an evil visionary, the chaos of the post-communist 1990s offered a lift to power to a petty thief with no moral scruples.
JANA MACHALICKÁ, Divadelní noviny

 My certain polemical reservations (…) should by no means be taken as disparagement of the Brno production of Morgan’s The Patriots. Quite the contrary. Staging the play in this country, at this time, is a first-class act! Not least because the core plot, ideas and moral has arguably never been more relevant. The story highlighting the inability of humanity to learn from history and our willingness to supress our conscience, morals and personal responsibility for whatever we help bring into the world (be it a dictator, a system, or a miraculous innovative algorithm, anything that overlooks or delegates and thus excludes our personal responsibility) is of eternal importance. Therefore – and despite my partial reservations – I am calling to Brno: Thank you!
VLADIMÍR JUST, Divadelní.net

The life of an ordinary person – and thus also their death – means nothing at all in Russia. This is just another terrifying revelation and wake-up call for Europeans that our cultures are completely different, in spite of the Czech national revivalists and Pan-Slavists convinced of the opposite. Looking at the century of Russian dictatorship in hindsight, including those forty years our nations spent under direct Soviet control, we should finally comprehend this. The NT Brno’s production and its creators might help in this sense.
ZUZANA AUGUSTOVÁ, Podhoubí

JAKUB ŠMÍD (1984) is a Czech director focusing on contemporary interpretations of classical plays. After completing his studies of drama at JAMU, he was engaged at the Goose on a String Theatre. He portrayed Shakespeare’s Macbeth (May I Have this Dance, Lady? Macbeth; directed by Martin Huba), Adolf Eichmann (The Gospel of St. Luke; written and directed by Jan Antonín Pitínský) or Ganya (Prince Myshkin is an Idiot; directed by Vladimír Morávek, as part of the Hundred Years of the Cobra project). Later he studied directing at FAMU under Věra Chytilová and Bohdan Sláma. His bachelor-degree film Non-swimmers won the Magnesia Award for the best student film of 2011. He graduated the master’s programme with the film Amanitas, nominated for the same award in 2015. His feature film debut was Laputa. Šmíd’s second feature film Short Cut, an adaptation of the book To Disappear by Petra Soukupová, was presented in international premiere within the main competition of the Cinekid Festival in Amsterdam. His first theatre direction was the production The Night of the Tribades at the Jára Cimrman Theatre in Žižkov in 2015. From 2017 to 2023, Šmíd was the artistic director of the D21 theatre in Vinohrady, where he directed productions such as The Sorrows of Young Werther, War with the Newts, Ubu the King, Crime and Punishment, Froth of the Daydream and others. Apart from his home stage, he also collaborated with the Lampion puppet theatre in Kladno (The Little Tree, The Edward Case), the Kladno Municipal Theatre (Anna Karenina) and the Prague City Theatres (Obsession). He went freelance as a director in September 2023, and his first project was Valerie and Her Week of Wonders prepared for the Laterna magika ensemble at the NT New Stage. In April 2024, his critically acclaimed production of Medea premiered at the Moravian-Silesian National Theater in Ostrava.

THE NT BRNO DRAMA ensemble has been performing in the Moravian capital under various names since 1884 and today found its venues at the Mahen Theatre and the Reduta Theatre. The current artistic director and dramaturge Milan Šotek joined the ensemble in 2019 and has positioned both NT Brno drama stages as platforms for drama and ensemble acting, with the intention of creating a modern large-scale drama theatre.