Tsar Peter

Peter is the young Emperor of Russia, charming and volatile, ruling with the confidence of a man who has never once doubted his own genius. He hosts lavish court entertainments, adores his mistress and his mother's memory in equal measure, and treats war, cruelty and affection with the same boyish enthusiasm. He wants to be loved and obeyed, ideally at once.

Hoult plays him as a delighted child in an absolute monarch's body, which makes the show's stated satire literal rather than metaphorical. He's genuinely funny, genuinely monstrous, and often both in the same sentence, so the audience keeps laughing a half-second before recoiling. That whiplash is the whole performance, and it never lets you settle.