Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists

It’s what mouthy Nazis on X wake up sweating about: in 2028 we will all be forced to wear dresses and kill fascists. Renowned Portuguese director Tiago Rodrigues’s deeply weird play bottles up all the political arguments of the day (and the way they have repeated for decades) and then shakes them out onto the stage. How do you face a radical, increasingly victorious right? You can use your words to disagree vehemently, or you can obey the blood pact of your grandmother who demanded that all her scions must, on the same day each year, find a fascist and shoot him in the head.

The provocative ending of the play has seen frequent interruptions at performances across the world, from lobbed citrus fruit to onstage protests. More on that later. First though, we are on a remote farm in the Portuguese countryside two years in the future and it’s shoot-a-fascist day. It was also in grandma’s pact that every member of the family should be called Catarina, so Catarina (António Parra) is preparing a meal, Catarina (Isabel Abreu) is drinking too much and, having just turned 26, it’s the first time her daughter Catarina (Beatriz Maia) is allowed to pull the trigger. But she has doubts, and this sets off a series of arguments that delay putting a bullet in the head of a speechwriter for the newly-elected far-right government.

Although a bonkers setup, Rodrigues uses it to argue all of society’s divisions in astonishingly comprehensive, astute and often very funny ways. It’s stuffed full of quotable lines about justice vs revenge, courage vs cowardice, when to call a spade a spade or a fascist a fascist. Rodrigues whips up that old argument about the limits of tolerance (should we even be tolerant towards actual Nazis??). It’s a super-smart bit of writing and, at the same time, with a character who constantly quotes Brecht and a blazing final speech from that speechwriter, it warns strongly against looking for answers in mere rhetoric.

There are horror movie vibes. Costume designer José António Tenente dresses everyone in old skirts and blouses like they’re in some strange cult, and they have their arguments in front of the frame of F Ribeiro’s plankboard farmhouse. Other oddities find their way in: Catarina (Marco Mendonça) refuses to speak, preferring to stay in his own world, and when he puts his headphones over his ears we hear his music, too.

Rodrigues stages it all so uncomfortably. For the first 20 minutes or so the family stands tightly in two rows, barely moving from their positions, as if posing for a picture. The fascist is strapped to a chair that’s halfway up the wall. With most of the cast on stage all the time, it’s never clear who is overhearing which conversations.

Without offering any easy answers, Rodrigues writes the pacifist left as well as he writes the, er, murder-inclined left. Then comes that much-protested ending, a blinder of a final speech in the mouth of the fascist, which could have been taken straight from a rally in – take your pick – Germany, the US, Portugal, Russia, Clacton…

And the speech goes on. And on. And on. Traditional family values, silent majorities, the will of the people, bad fake news journalists, is domestic violence really that bad, if the constitution doesn’t let us do what we want let’s just change the constitution. Its length - a masterpiece of weedy righteous anger as played by Romeu Costa - is its point. Coming at the end of two-and-a-half hours with no interval, it’s deeply unpleasant to sit through.

Maybe some in the audience are glad to hear from someone, finally, they can agree with. Maybe others, in a desperate desire to make him shut up, would gladly shoot him themselves. The National Theatre press night audience are too British to make a scene as other crowds have done, though there are a few pantomime boos for Costa come the curtain call. But it’s a remarkable end to an extraordinary play.