That Bastard, Puccini!
By James Inverne, Directed by Daniel Slater
It’s 1893. Puccini is close to being hailed as Italy’s newest opera king, but needs to write something to cement his reputation. He’s found the perfect subject: the enchanting love story of La Boheme.
There’s only one problem – fellow composer Ruggero Leoncavallo has thought of it too. And worse still, he’s claiming Puccini stole his idea…
Soon it’s a race between two of Italy’s hottest composers: the battle of the Bohemes. The winner will claim a place in the pantheon, the loser a footnote in history. With riches, rivalry and reputation on the line, both will have to face more than they bargained for. But there’s more to life than great art – isn’t there?
A hilarious, chaotic and captivating new play by James Inverne, That Bastard, Puccini! brings to life an explosive professional rivalry, a plagiarism scandal that rocked Europe, and a friendship tested to the limit. Witness the story behind one of the world’s most famous masterpieces… and as a result, one of the least famous. Both of them titled La Boheme.
RJG Productions Limited in association with Park Theatre.
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Evenings
19:30
Thu & Sat15:00
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Duration
Approx 1 hour and 40 mins inc interval
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Tickets
£15 - £49.50
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Genre
Drama
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Age guidance
14+
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Content warnings
This production contains strong language and haze.
Gallery







In the press
"This show will pin you to your seat"
The Times on Hir (Park Theatre, 2024)
"Stingingly relevant… confronting and very funny"
The Stage on Hir (Park Theatre, 2024)
"A life-enhancing comedy, expertly conducted"
WhatsOnStage on FANNY (The Watermill Theatre)
Cast and creatives
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Alasdair Buchan
Leoncavallo
Alasdair Buchan
Leoncavallo
Alasdair trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He has just finished playing Mr. Paravicini in The Mousetrap (St. Martins’ Theatre).
Other theatre includes: Accolade (Theatre Royal, Windsor & Tour); Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain (Birmingham Stage Company); The Da Vinci Code (World Premiere, UK Tour); Stephen Daldry’s An Inspector Calls (UK Tour); Séance (The Other Palace); Sherlock Holmes and the Crimson Cobbles (The Theatre, Chipping Norton & Tour); Night Must Fall (Salisbury Playhouse & Original Theatre); A Little History of the World (World Premiere, Watermill Theatre & Tour); Urinetown: The Musical (UK Premiere, Apollo Theatre & St. James’s Theatre); for The Jamie Lloyd Company: Richard III (Broadway World UK Award nomination) and The Pride (both Trafalgar Studios); A Christmas Carol, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet and The Importance of Being Earnest (London Touring Players); Macbeth (Lord Chamberlain’s Men); Newsrevue (Canal Cafe Theatre) and The Lost World (Bristol Old Vic).
Screen credits include: We Hunt Together (BBC/UKTV); Ghostbusters: The Gates of Gozer (Secret Cinema); Casualty (BBC); The Cost of Living (Rhyming Films) and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Warner Bros.)
Audiobooks include: Dark Star: A Biography of Vivian Leigh and Beyond the 39 Steps: A Life of John Buchan for Bloomsbury.
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Sebastien Torkia
Puccini
Sebastien Torkia
Puccini
Sebastien’s theatre credits include: Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors (Menier Chocolate Factory); The Red Shoes (RSC Stratford); Oklahoma (Theatre Royal Drury Lane); The Mousetrap (St. Martin’s, London); Rock Follies (Chichester Minerva); Berlusconi A New Musical (Southwark Playhouse); A Christmas Carol (Old Vic Theatre); RSC’s Matilda the Musical (West End); Top Hat (National Tour); The Stripper (West End Offie Nomination, The Other Palace); Peter And The Starcatcher (Royal Theatre, Northampton); The Wild Party (The Other Palace); Travels With My Aunt (Minerva, Chichester); Sweeney Todd (Leeds Playhouse/Royal Exchange, Manchester); The Lion King (West End); A Streetcar Named Desire (Bolton Octogan); Women Beware Women (National Theatre); La Cage Aux Folles (West End/Menier Chocolate Factory); Guys And Dolls (Piccadilly Theatre); Saturday Night Fever (West End, Germany, Italy); Martin Guerre (West End); Grease (West End); Funny Girl (Minerva,Chichester); A Chorus Line (Sheffield Crucible); The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Leeds Playhouse) and Singin’ In The Rain (National Tour).
Television credits include: Mammals (Amazon Prime); The Boleyns (BBC); Victoria Wood’s That Day We Sang; Coronation Street and Babes In The Wood.
Film credits include: Aladdin (Disney); Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again; Paddington 2; Mamma Mia; The Clan; The Phantom Of The Opera and Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
Radio work includes: Leaving Normal (BBC4).
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Lisa-Anne Wood
Berthe
Lisa-Anne Wood
Berthe
Theatre includes: Wicked (Playful Productions/Apollo Victoria, West End); Company (David Adkin Ltd/Arts Centre Theatre, Aberdeen); Three Phantoms (Tour of Asia); Phantom of the Opera (Really Useful Group/Her Majesty’s Theatre); A Little Night Music (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre); Little Women (Paul Taylor-Mills/Playhouse Theatre) and Les Miserables (Cameron Mackintosh Ltd/Queen’s Theatre).
TV includes: Humans (Channel 4).
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James Inverne
Writer
James Inverne
Writer
James Inverne started his writing life as a journalist, just out of university, as Classical CD Reviewer for the Mail On Sunday. Later he became European Performing Arts Correspondent for TIME, a regular arts writer/commentator for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and CNN, and the Editor of Gramophone Magazine. The author of six books (most recently for Faber), his first play, A Walk With Mr Heifetz, had its world premiere Off-Broadway in 2018 (Primary Stages). To date, James has written seven plays (which have received productions or developmental workshops from Ambassador Theatre Group, Theatre Ariel and others) and three films, two of them for IMAX Entertainment. James wrote the feature-length docu-concert films, Cities That Sing: Paris and Cities That Sing: Venice starring Renée Fleming, released in IMAX cinemas across the United States in 2022 and 2023, and another television feature for Bryn Terfel.
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Daniel Slater
Director
Daniel Slater
Director
London born Daniel Slater is internationally recognised as one of today’s leading opera directors. He made his European debut at Opera North in 1998, with a production of The Bartered Bride that was nominated for numerous major awards and went to the Opéra National du Rhin the following year. His American debut followed three years later, an award-winning and muchacclaimed production of Wozzeck at the Santa Fe Festival. On both sides of the Atlantic, his shows are known for their wit and humanity, intelligence and originality, clarity and modernity. Daniel’s opera productions include: Orfeo ed Euridice/Dido & Aeneas, Tamerlano, Belshazzar (Grange Festival); Peter Grimes (Brisbane Festival/Opera Queensland); Die Zauberflöte (Yekaterinburg Opera); Fidelio, Peter Grimes (LPO, Royal Festival Hall); Tannhäuser (Estonian National Opera); Nabucco (Flanders Opera); Lohengrin (San Francisco, Houston Grand Opera, Geneva). For Garsington Opera he has directed The Cunning Little Vixen, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni (also Birgitta Festival, Tallinn); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, La Cenerentola, Don Pasquale (also Geneva and Caen); La Gazza Ladra; Tristan und Isolde (Norwegian National Opera); Aida, Eugene Onegin (Opera Holland Park); La Traviata (Houston Grand Opera); Salome, Wozzeck (Santa Fe); Peter Grimes (Geneva); Xerxes (Royal Opera, Stockholm); L’Arbore di Diana (Palau de les Arts, Valencia); Samson (Buxton Festival nominated for the Manchester Evening News “Best Opera Production” Award); Fortunio, Rigoletto, Falstaff, Don Giovanni (Grange Park); Betrothal in a Monastery (Glyndebourne, Valencia); Manon Lescaut (Opera North, Norwegian National Opera, Oviedo); L’elisir d’amore (Opera North, WNO, New Zealand Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Chicago Lyric, San Francisco); The Bartered Bride (Opera North, Strasbourg, Valencia, New Zealand); The Cunning Little Vixen (Bregenz, San Francisco, Geneva); Il barbiere di Siviglia and Der Vogelhandler (Komische Oper, Berlin) and La Boheme (Scottish Opera, Opera Ireland). Theatre productions include: The Lifespan of a Fact and Romeo and Juliet (Singapore Repertory Theatre); Educating Rita; Making Waves (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough); Confusions (Salisbury Playhouse); Life Goes On (Haymarket Theatre); Grab the Dog (National Theatre Studio); The Mark (Soho Theatre Company); Gangster Apparel (Old Red Lion); Three Birds Alighting on a Field and The Honest Whore for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. A fluent speaker of French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish, he began his opera career as an assistant director at Opera North, the ROH and the Opéra National de Paris. Before that he worked as the Associate Director of the Nottingham Playhouse, Acting Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre and Artistic Director of Bristol Express. He was educated at the United World College of the Atlantic, at Bristol University, where he took a firstclass degree in English, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he received a PhD for his thesis on Nietzsche’s influence on D.H. Lawrence.
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