© MARC BRENNER
Early in Peter Morgan’s new play, Patriots, we meet a man down on his luck. Having lost his job as deputy mayor of St Petersburg, he now drives a taxi. He appears as a suppliant in the office of Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch from whom he previously refused to take a bribe. Berezovsky demolishes his KGB CV—“East Germany is where they generally sent the desk jockeys, the altar boys, the softies, the ‘B’ team…”— but agrees to find him a place working for Boris Yeltsin. The taxi driver’s name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.