Most important, although many in Naples and Sicily welcomed the takeover from Turin, this reflected disillusion with their Bourbon monarchs, not enthusiasm for Piedmont's Victor Emmanuel II.

ECONOMIST: Italy

Worse, you will miss the dramatic arc of this remarkable production, as the action courses over decades, in and out of personal calamity and ideological disillusion before coming to shore at what might best be described as a Stoppardian middle way.

ECONOMIST: Tom Stoppard: Coming ashore | The