A horse! A horse! My Kingdom for a horse!

Richard III in Richard III by William Shakespeare.

One of the most incredible things about living in Doha, is that the city and country is developing at an amazing rate. Everything changes on a daily basis, and building sites become offices and homes almost overnight, particularly at the moment, when the building seems to continue 24 hours a day 6 days a week.

Not only is the skyline changing, but Doha is also becoming one of the most exciting places to be in terms of the activities and events that are beginning to happen here.

One of the most exciting, for me at least, was that the Qatar National Convention Centre was hosting a production of Richard the III, by William Shakespeare. Not only was it hosting a play by William Shakespeare which I had not seen before, it was the most spectacular version in the world.

The production was produced by The Old Vic Theatre Company. THE Old Vic theatre Company. The production was touring and had a stop in Doha. If that wasn't good enough, the production was directed by Sam Mendes, of American Beauty fame, for which he won Oscar awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

Then, to top it all, Richard III was played by Kevin Spacey. Yup, THE Kevin Spacey. The Oscar winning actor who was in Seven, American Beauty, LA Confidential and Horrible Bosses.

The rest of the cast were no less magnificent. The majority had done some serious theatre time, and there were a few that were instantly recognisable. For instance, Gemma Jones played Queen Margaret. She has previously played the part of Madame Pomfrey in Harry Potter, Bridget's Mother in Bridget Jones's Diary and Connie James in Spooks (She was the double traitor Russian spy who infiltrated MI5).

If this production had taken place in the UK, the tickets would have been sold out months and months before the show. As it happens, we heard about it the week before and still managed to get seats for the only evening performance. They were up in the rafters, but it was so worth it!

First of all - here is the Qatar National Convention Centre. It is designed to look like a Sidra Tree, and the tree come literally through the glass, so that it is on either side:

Yes that is a sculpture of a monster spider. Aragog anyone?

The front of QNCC is split into three sections, the third section, on the far right, is the auditorium. The auditorium is a 3000 seat auditorium. The pictures of the inside, that's where we were sitting, on the third tier, and it was completely and utterly full by the time the production began:

We weren't allowed to take photographs during the performance, so the images below are photographs I sourced from Google Images, my photography skills are nowhere near this good!

Needless to say the performance was amazing! Richard III is a really long play, but the time seemed to fly by. All of the cast were absolutely incredible, and Kevin Spacey simply blew the stage away. We were lucky to see it, and we probably won't get to see anything like that again.