Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Play-goers, beware. Director Robert Icke is back in town, and that means a turgid four-hour revival of a heavyweight classic with every actor screaming, bawling, weeping, howling and generally overdoing it. But here’s a surprise. Player Kings, Icke’s new version of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, is a dazzling piece of entertainment and the
‘Like being chained to a lunatic.’ That’s how a man feels in relation to his libido. And the lunatic latches on to anything, irrationally, and without warning. In Cambridge recently I dropped into a lecture given by a beautiful historian, Lea Ypi, from Albania, whose discourse included this observation about revolutionaries: ‘Once they attain power
Keir Starmer came to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) with a spring in his step. He announced that he owned ‘a rare unsigned copy’ of Liz Truss’s memoirs. ‘The only unsigned copy,’ he added with a chortle. Then he asked Rishi Sunak to justify the calamities of Truss’s premiership. ‘He should spend less time reading that
The Divine Mrs S is a backstage satire set in the year 1800, when flouncy costumes and elaborate English prose were common cultural ornaments. On press night the venue was full of resting actors and theatrical hangers-on who adored the show’s in-jokes and rehearsal-room wisecracks. Titus Andronicus is ‘an experimental play about a pie’, says
If you’ve heard good reports about MJ the Musical, believe them all and multiply everything by a hundred. As a music-and-dance spectacular, the show is as exhilarating as any Jackson produced while he was alive. The sets, the costumes, the choreography and the live band deliver an amazing collective punch. When he removes his black
Faith Healer is a classic Oirish wrist-slasher about three sponging half-wits caught in a downward spiral of penury, booze, squalor, sexual repression, bad healthcare, murderous violence and non-stop drizzle. The mood of grinding despair never lets up for a second as the healer, Frank Hardy, along with his moaning wife and their Cockney sidekick, motors
35 min listen
This week: Richard Madeley reads his diary (01:06), Kate Andrews describes how Kate-gate gripped America (06:18), Lloyd Evans warns against meddling with Shakespeare (11:38), Sam McPhail details how Cruyff changed modern football (18:17), and Graeme Thomson reads his interview with Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera (25:23). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
Sheridan Smith’s new show is more a mystery than a musical. Opening Night is based on a 1977 film by John Cassavetes that failed to attract a major US distributor. After opening briefly in LA, it vanished without trace. It’s a backstage drama about a tattooed drunk, Myrtle, who accepts the lead role in a
A strip club, a prison, a mental asylum, a Great War field hospital, an addiction clinic, a Napoleonic palace. These are the typical locations for a modern production of Shakespeare, whose interpreters seem to agree that any setting is better than the one chosen by the playwright. The assumption today is that the Bard needs
At PMQs we saw the next year of politics condensed into a few seconds. Sir Keir Starmer asked the PM why he declined to call an election. ‘My working assumption is that the election will be in the second half of the year,’ said Rishi. So there it is. A date in October rather than
Citizens’ assemblies will transform Britain. That’s the promise made by activists from groups like Extinction Rebellion. Labour has also mooted introducing the assemblies if it wins power, even if it did later backtrack on the plans. In Waltham Forest, north-east London, the revolution has already begun: a citizens’ assembly is underway there that will determine
Set in 1948, The Human Body is about four heroic women fighting to create the NHS despite opposition from right-wing extremists led by the ‘snob’ and ‘warmonger’ Winston Churchill. One of these heroic women is a Labour councillor, another is a physician on a bike, the third works at Westminster for a socialist MP and
‘How are you going to pay me back?’ This is the eternal question of the hard-pressed dad as he hands £10 to a teenage son with an urgent appointment at the snooker club. ‘My Saturday job,’ says Isaac satirically. He hasn’t got a Saturday job and that’s my fault, apparently. His friends all have immensely
The plot to shoot Diane Abbot dominated PMQs. The Tory donor, Frank Hester, reportedly said that the MP for Hackney North inspired violent thoughts in him, and made him want to ‘hate all black women.’ Sir Keir Starmer asked if Rishi Sunak was happy to be bankrolled by someone who harboured fantasies about gunshots and
Podcast fever continues to dominate the political airwaves. The rewards for success are enormous and popular podcasters are able to fill concert halls around the county by delivering a couple of hours of chitchat to willing punters. Since the running costs are minimal, the profits are vast. This explains the gold-rush of media darlings and
Double Feature is a new play by John Logan, whose credits include Skyfall. The subject is movie-making, and the action is set in 1964 in a Hollywood cottage where Alfred Hitchcock is preparing Tippi Hedren for a nude scene in Marnie. The great director, who made a star of the unknown Hedren by casting her
Jeremy Hunt is the spotty, speccy geek who doesn’t wear specs and doesn’t have spots. But ‘geek’ is very much Hunt’s brand. He’s a gangly, uncool type who, for no reason whatever, is as tall as a basketball player. In his Budget he set out to promote Continuity Conservatism, and spoke as if this were
Sarah Snook, who appeared in Succession, takes centre stage in Kip Williams’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only novel. The best thing about The Picture of Dorian Gray is the narrative premise: a young aristocrat commissions a portrait of himself and the image grows old while he retains his youthful good looks. It’s a ghost story,
Sir Keir Starmer’s advisers have very short memories. At PMQs, the Labour leader mocked Liz Truss for visiting America to ‘flog a new book in search of fame and wealth’. He jeered at her suggestion that ‘the deep state’ had sabotaged her career, and he put it to Rishi Sunak that the Tories have become
Big budget, huge stage, massive temptation. The Lyttelton is a notorious elephant-trap for designers who feel obliged to fill every inch of space with effortful proof of their brilliance. Frankie Bradshaw, designer of Dear Octopus, avoids these snares and instead creates a modest playing area, smaller than the actual stage, which is bookended by a
