One day after he was struck with a rock in a random attack on the Upper East Side, the actor Michael Stuhlbarg will appear in Monday’s first preview of the Broadway play “Patriots,” in which he stars as a Russian oligarch who helped facilitate Vladimir V. Putin’s rise.
Stuhlbarg, best known for his role as a gangster in the series “Boardwalk Empire,” was walking in Central Park on Sunday evening when a man threw a rock, hitting him in the back of the neck, the police said. Stuhlbarg chased the man, Xavier Israel, 27, out of the park, where he was taken into custody and charged with assault. The police said Stuhlbarg declined medical attention.
A spokeswoman for “Patriots,” Louisa Pancoast, said that Stuhlbarg, 55, would appear onstage on Monday for his debut in the play, which was written by Peter Morgan, the creator of the British royalty drama “The Crown.” He is playing Boris A. Berezovsky, a Russian business tycoon who reigned in post-Soviet Russia and helped install Putin as president, but then had a bitter falling out with the Kremlin and died in exile.
The play, directed by Rupert Goold, opens on April 22. It was first staged in 2022 in London, where Tom Hollander played Berezovsky.
Stuhlbarg had his breakthrough lead performance in the Coen brothers film “A Serious Man,” going on to numerous onscreen roles, including as Dr. Richard Sackler, the prescription opioid magnate, in the limited series “Dopesick,” for which he was nominated for an Emmy.
A fixture of New York’s theater scene in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuhlbarg last appeared on Broadway in 2005, when he received a Tony nomination for starring in Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman.”
