Last Updated on September 22, 2026
Portuguese play presents urgent political and moral dilemmas
4.0 out of 5.0 starsPart drama, part philosophical debate, and full-scale politics, Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, playing at the Dorfman, National Theatre for one week, is a Portuguese play with English surtitles, that has been causing a storm since it was first performed in 2020. Written and directed by Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues, this is a play that sets out to discomfort rather than to reassure audiences.
The play is set in 2028 in Southern Portugal and references an event that occurred in 1954 during the fascist Salazar dictatorship. A harvester named Catarina Eufémia was murdered by the regime’s police in the Alentejo town of Baleizão during a workers’ strike. She became the symbol of the Communist Party resistance against the regime and has been immortalised in numerous Portuguese poems and songs. In the play, a family has, for the past seven decades, enacted an annual ritual of kidnapping and murdering a fascist to avenge the woman who was murdered in their town. When family members turn 26, they take their turn to carry out the killing. In the year that the play is set, Catarina (Beatriz Maia), recently 26-years-old, refuses to pull the trigger. This ushers in a debate amongst her relatives about how fascism should be opposed. Is it acceptable to fight fascism with violence or does that emulate fascism? Does the end justify the means? How do we deal with the contradictions in our democracy? In a tolerant society, how do we oppose intolerance?
Playwright, Rodrigues, Director of the Avignon Theatre Festival. has given many interviews about his play, and reminds interviewers of the armed resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during WWII.
Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists runs to two and a half hours without an interval and is an intense experience where complex moral problems are presented. Not only are political and philosophical issues debated – the trolley problem gets the Rodrigues treatment – but the final half hour is a monologue by the fascist. He expounds at length, his hate-filled diatribe becoming increasingly extreme. This begs the question of whether a commitment to free speech threatens to undermine the democratic values we hold dear and whether democracy itself has the necessary tools to fight fascism.
This deliberately provocative monologue has resulted in a range of angry responses wherever the play has been performed. When it was staged in Portugal, the audience, in an attempt to drown out the actor, broke into Grândola, Vila Morena, the song of resistance to fascism during the Carnation Revolution which restored democracy in 1974. In Italy, the audience sang Bella Ciao, an anti-fascist song. In Berlin, members of the audience tried to wrestle the actor off the stage. Rodrigues has observed that while members of the audience may in theory oppose violence, the final monologue is so provocative that ‘kill the fascist’ is sometimes shouted. Rather than the audience’s vocal opposition to the monologue being the exception, it is only during a handful of performances where the audience sits quietly and listens. I wondered how a London audience would react. If silence indicates consent, are we accomplices if we remain silent in our seats?
As might have been predicted, the London audience sat quietly and politely listened. There were a couple of whistles and some mild laughter. The English ability to ridicule those with whom we disagree has a long history in satirical comedy and, even at the ballot box we now have Count Binface. But what the play forces us to question is whether ridiculing those who threaten to sweep aside the Constitution, to ban same sex marriage, abortion, to roll back the rights of women and minority groups – whether humour will protect our democracy. It is also possible that the strong reaction to the fascist speech in countries like Germany, Italy and Portugal is due to the audiences there having lived under fascism and still bearing the scars. In England we are one step removed. Yet anyone who has taken up arms for a cause – or supported those who do – cannot stand aside as if the disagreements that are so emotively argued in the play are simply an intellectual exercise. This is an urgent play for our times and extends to many of the conflicts that are currently raging. We may laugh, but it is no laughing matter.
This should not imply that the play itself has no humour. On the contrary, it is often very funny. The character (Joao Vicente) who quotes Brecht at every opportunity is hilarious and contributes to the absurdist quality of the play as well as making a case for the constant contradictions that we all carry within us, much like Mother Courage.
As a play, Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists had a sense of urgency that grew as the play developed. It is the skill of the playwright to weave in much humour into what is a deadly serious set of dilemmas. Equally it takes a particular calibre of actor to carry it off. Here, was an ensemble piece in which each of the eight actors had a chance to shine. Much like a jazz band where every instrument has its solo.
Sometimes, watching a play spoken in another language with surtitles disrupts the emotional engagement as the audience misses facial expression and nuance, their eyes focussed on the words above the stage. Here, the actors’ performances were so powerful that I was constantly engaged. Particularly memorable is a scene when a family photo taken before the killing of the fascist, turns into a dance macabre, the actors depicting the sort of ritualistic movements that lead to an emotional and physical fever pitch which takes people out of themselves and into an altered state where violence is possible.
At first the costumes were confusing – all the cast wore long skirts – and then it became clear that both men and women were called Catarina. In part this is because the family was steeped in its tradition and role of avenging the death of Catarina Eufémia and attempting to remove the stain of their forebear – a policeman who did nothing to stop this atrocity. But it presumably also references our contemporary inclination to signify our solidarity with political injustices and infringements of freedom of speech with the slogan ‘je suis Charlie’ and numerous organisations and people since.
When he wrote Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists in 2020 and set it in 2028, some of his Portuguese colleagues thought that Rodrigues had written a dystopian scenario that could never return to Portugal. Yet, in the few years since, ultra-right-wing parties have been gaining seats in parliaments not only in Portugal, where Chega is the second-largest party, but across Europe. This is a deeply disturbing play because it addresses a burning issue that threatens democracy and raises the uncomfortable question of whether our democratic institutions are capable of protecting us from fascism through the ballot box.
Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists runs from 21 – 26 September
National Theatre, Dorfman
South Bank
London SE1 9PX
Looking for another play at the National Theatre? Read our review of Electra/Persona
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