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Now Reading: Teatro Variedades at 100: A Stage That Refused to Go Dark
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Teatro Variedades at 100: A Stage That Refused to Go Dark
Teatro Variedades at 100: A Stage That Refused to Go Dark
The seats are narrow, the sightlines intimate, the plasterwork so fresh it could pass for new. Teatro Variedades, the Parque Mayer playhouse, wears its second life with quiet confidence. On 8 July it turned one hundred.
Born into upheaval—inaugurated in 1926 with the revue Pó de Arroz (“Face Powder”) and Vasco Santana in the cast, it shut the very next day in the aftermath of a military coup—the Variedades went on to outlast dictatorship, a 1966 fire that gutted its stage box, and three decades of abandonment. Architect Manuel Aires Mateus led a €5-million rehabilitation that returned it to life on 5 October 2024. Now, in a city where historic venues keep falling to real-estate pressure, the centenary programme amounts to a statement: this stage will not go dark again.
The centrepiece is VARIEDADES (…como uma ópera bufa erótica e satírica), created by Fernando Heitor, Flávio Gil and João Paulo Soares and directed by Gil: a satirical revue in the tradition the house was built for, running until 16 August (Wednesday to Saturday at 21:00, Sundays at 16:00, €14–€22 via BOL). Ten performers and a six-piece band led by Soares on piano fill roughly two hours.
Around the show, the centenary draws on more of the theatre’s past. Um Lugar chamado Variedades (“A Place Called Variedades”), curated by José Daniel Ferreira and Mário Nascimento with Museu de Lisboa, fills the foyer and corridors with photographs, programmes and audio testimonies gathered during a public appeal by EGEAC (free admission, open until 15 August 2027). The film cycle Rostos do Variedades (“Faces of the Variedades”) screens restored classics including A Canção de Lisboa (1933) at Cinecapitólio and Cinema São Jorge through July, while Paula Gomes Magalhães’s 100 Anos de Variedades, from Imprensa Nacional, gives the building a 264-page biography.
On centenary night, before the curtain rose, Cláudia Pascoal sang “Cheira Bem, Cheira a Lisboa” (“It Smells Good, It Smells of Lisbon”) in the foyer. The song was born inside these walls and returned to the room that first heard it. The seats are still narrow. The stage, once more, is lit.
