Torpedo Theater: Theatre in De Wallen, Amsterdam

★★★★★ 4.9

Torpedo Theater is a very small theatre in the Sint Pieterspoortsteeg, a side alley of the Nes in the centre of Amsterdam, and it bills itself as the smallest in the city. You go for small-scale theatre, music, talk shows and literary evenings in a room with unusually good acoustics, in what the theatre calls the quietest part of the Wallen. The programme has run since 2001 and takes in small plays, performances, talk shows, salon and theme evenings, book and film presentations and music. Open-stage nights and regular series sit alongside one-off shows, and beginners get a chance too, since well-attended evenings help to pay for those with smaller audiences. The theatre has no fixed hours, so each night is listed in the agenda on its website. It was built by Wim Kerkhove, the last puppeteer of the Dam, with his friend Bart van den Bos, as a winter home for his puppet booth. The theatre draws the parallel with Oscar Carré, who built Theater Carré for his circus: the city's largest and smallest theatres served the same purpose, shelter in the cold months. The original design, a set in the form of a theatre, has been kept with care, including the tall vertical proscenium made for the puppets. Until 2012 it was known as the Parooltheater. Stichting Torpedo Theater runs it on ticket sales, the bar, donations, sponsorship and hire. You reserve by email at reserveren@torpedotheater.nl, or by phone between 09:00 and 17:00. When a show is sold out, you can still go on the waiting list. The stage measures about two metres by two, and most performers play acoustically, with a tuned piano and a projector to hand.