Archduke tickets

See the newest dark comedy from Rajiv Joseph, an Obie winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Archduke plays off Broadway in the 2025/26 season at Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre in a production directed by Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder) and starring Tony nominee Patrick Page (Hadestown).

Archduke off Broadway offers a sharply comedic look at the fateful journey of Gavrilo Princip — best remembered as Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassin. It's Serbia in 1914, and after coughing up blood, Gavrilo is diagnosed with TB — and with such a death sentence, what is there to lose? Easily influenced, he is lured into a mysterious organization that promises glory, purpose...and a sandwich.

The organization's lunatic Captain sends Gavrilo on a mission he claims will restore peace and justice to their depraved nation and avenge the unfairness of their terminal illness. Their assignment? Assassinate the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie.

The play positions the assassin not as a hardened killer but instead a wayward young man in search of opportunity and purpose, providing insightful commentary on today's disillusioned and similarly lost young men. A century later, how have politics disappointed the masses and led to upheaval?

After several successful regional production — “the comic energy of the writing carries the characters to their tragic finish line," The Los Angeles Times wrote — Joseph's hit play now comes to NYC. Hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most provocatively talented American playwrights,” Joseph has a keen ear for character-driven comedy and puts that on full display in Archduke in New York.