The Popinjay Cavalier

Proof that the maddest things can and do happen in British theatre, here’s sweary cinema auteur Quentin Tarantino’s debut play, starring Sacha Baron Cohen in his West End debut. You have to think that the emergence of The Popinjay Cavalier can at least partly be attributed to one, Tarantino’s silly self-imposed declaration that he’s only going to direct ten films (he’s stalled on nine) and, two, the fact that it’s cheaper to stage a play in London than in New York. Beyond that, let’s just enjoy the fact The Popinjay Cavalier is a real thing that’s really happening. We don’t know a huge amount about any specific story, but the Tarantino written and directed play is a swashbuckling 1830s-set romance that pays tribute to the great silent movie action flicks of a century later, with George Bruce, Ernst Vajda and Jesse Lasky Jr all cited as influences (so you can see why Tarantino wanted to do it). Cohen’s career has largely been screen-based, but he’s stage and indeed clowning trained and certainly the two together raises expectations sky high. Tarantino himself has admitted the possibility that it might all go horribly wrong, but with the ever-reliable Sonia Friedman producing and a generous month of previews, there’s reason to hope this improbable gamble pays off.