Back in March we brought you the news that, in his ongoing efforts to avoid making his tenth and supposedly final movie, Pulp Fiction auteur Quentin Tarantino has turned playwright and is set to premiere his first stage offering, The Popinjay Cavalier, in London’s West End in 2027. Now, Variety is reporting that The Popinjay Cavalier has found its, well, cavalier popinjay, in the form of three-time Oscar nominee Sacha Baron Cohen.
Described by Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sonia Friedman Productions as “a rambunctious comedy of deception and disguise inspired by the grand swashbuckling epics of stage and screen”, The Popinjay Cavalier — which is set in 1830s Europe — remains something of a mystery at this stage. No venue or creative team has been confirmed for Tarantino’s theatre debut as of yet, and beyond the title’s invocation of ‘someone vain, conceited, and oftentimes extravagantly dressed’ (that’ll be Cohen’s character), no further details about the show’s plot or cast have been revealed just yet. The casting of talented thespian and notorious funnyman Cohen however, who’s recently been making headlines with the surprise announcement of controversy-courting Ali G comeback movie Who Iz I?, is our clearest indicator yet that Tarantino isn’t holding back when it comes to bringing his Hollywood clout from screen to stage.
While further details on Tarantino’s latest sidequest remain scarce, there is an official Popinjay Cavalier website you can head to where priority booking sign-ups are already open. With QT having written a OUATIH novel and a non-fiction book on 70s cinema, started up The Video Archives podcast with Roger Avary, penned The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth for pal David Fincher to direct, and named his favourite films of the 21st century since his last movie, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, hit cinemas, the man’s running out of non-filmmaking artistic endeavours to turn his hand to. But while we continue to wait with bated breath for QT10, we can at least look forward to scrapping for a stalls seat at The Popinjay Cavalier next year. Yippee!
