Jeers, walkouts, stage invasions: will Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists trigger British audiences too?

It has inspired violent protests from Norway to Rome – and now it’s hitting the UK. Playwright Tiago Rodrigues explains why the far-right speech at the drama’s climax has proved so incendiary In February, turbulent scenes inside a German theatre made headlines around the globe. During the final act of a play at Schauspielhaus theatre in Bochum, the audience first jeered and whistled at a performer in the role of a far-right politician. An orange lobbed from the auditorium narrowly missed its target; eventually, two spectators climbed on to the stage and tried to wrestle the actor off. News of the incident travelled around the world: it seemed a bizarre throwback to a world in which people were not able to tell the difference between art and real life, like 19th-century Parisians stampeding out of a cinema after watching a train hurtle towards the camera. For the man who wrote the play, however, it was nothing unusual. “I was not surprised by the reaction,” says Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues. “I was surprised by the fact that it was so surprising for so many people.” He describes the audience’s reaction to his play Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists as “very intense”, but also “typical”...