Could the future of the world have really been determined by the meeting of two angry, physically sick young men one night in an abandoned warehouse, both more up for a fight and macho beefing than being transformed into agents of a history-altering assassination?

The blood on their handkerchiefs when they cough shows their physical frailties, and also prefigures the blood they will infamously help to be spilled.

In the background of Rajiv Joseph’s engaging if flawed play Archduke, first performed (and since rewritten) in 2017, is the specter of the First World War and the event widely held to be its spark, the assassination on June 28, 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary.

That pivotal moment in world history is where this Roundabout

See Full Page