Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Looking back at the year’s West End theatre, a few shows stand out. First, the best. Vanya, starring Andrew Scott at the Duke of York’s Theatre, was an audacious and frankly barmy attempt to reimagine Chekhov’s sprawling family melodrama, Uncle Vanya, as a monologue. The risk was that it might come across as a lengthy
Infinite Life is about five American women, all dumpling-shaped, who sit in a hotel garden observing a hunger strike. Some of them haven’t touched food for days, some for weeks. ‘Don’t be afraid to puke,’ counsels one of the dumplings. ‘Puking is good.’ They pass their afternoons wittering inanely about nothing at all. One dumpling
Christmas at PMQs began with a call for the government to scrap its in-house astrology team. Greg Smith, a Tory backbencher, said he was fed up with the Office of Budget Responsibility whose latest forecast ‘was £30 billion out.’ Smith wants ‘lower taxes’ and he suggested that ‘we need a better system of financial modelling.’
The Rwanda treaty has established two new norms in politics. First, the Supreme Court acts as a revising chamber with the power to change government legislation. Secondly, Labour is terrified of Rwanda. At PMQs, Sir Keir thought he was on a winning ticket and all he had to do was mock the relocation scheme and
To help out friends, I sometimes collect a boy from his primary school near Sloane Square. This part of London boasts the most expensive homes in Britain and the local families are served by a crop of ultra-pricey schools. The best known, Hill House, was founded in the 1940s by an eccentric army officer, ‘the
Green, green, green. Everything on stage is the same shade of eau de Nil in the NT’s version of Federico García Lorca’s classic, The House of Bernarda Alba. All the furniture and props are green. The mirrors, the walls, the crucifixes, the clocks and even the bucket and the knife-rack bear the same queasy pigment.
Winter looms, and at PMQs the Scottish nationalists were swift to exploit the darkness and the chill. ‘Dread,’ intoned Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s freakishly macabre leader in Westminster. ‘Their hearts fill with dread,’ he said. Flynn was describing the inner lives of parents in Aberdeen as they contemplate the first snows of November. Their ‘dread’
Theatres outside London like to produce shows that appeal to their local communities. Inside London, where cultural attitudes are strangely warped, theatres are happy to disregard the neighbourhoods they serve, and they show little interest in the lives of their customers. But the Royal Court Theatre and Hampstead Theatre have both chosen to stage shows
PMQs began with Sir Keir Starmer’s favourite trick. He read out a sob-story intended to humiliate the government. Having outlined the woes of two unfortunate citizens, he accused Rishi Sunak of ‘refusing to take responsibility’ and of ‘boasting that everything is fine’. The sad pawns in this prank were a teenage boy and his hard-working
Backstairs Billy is a biographical comedy about William Tallon, who worked as the Queen Mother’s chief footman for years following the death of George VI in 1952. Tallon was an enthusiastic gay cottager whom the tabloids suggestively dubbed ‘backstairs Billy’ during the 1970s when attitudes to homosexuality were growing more enlightened. The show, directed by
The director of the National Theatre will be stepping down in 2025. I’ve written to the chairman offering a new vision for Britain’s leading playhouse. Dear Sir Damon Buffini, I’m a reviewer of plays and a part-time theatre producer. In the past 20 years I’ve seen more than 2,000 shows, hundreds of them at your
The House of Lords is like a bag of doughnuts in the lap of a traffic policeman. There’s always room for one more. The newest peer, David Cameron, was the subject of much amused scorn at PMQs. Rishi Sunak wasn’t prepared for an obvious query about his new Foreign Secretary: what is Dave’s greatest feat
To Have And To Hold boasts a starry cast and a top-class creative team. Richard Bean’s script is a meditation on ageing, directed by Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson, and it opens with a sight-gag about a wonky stairlift descending into a suburban lounge in Yorkshire. The stairlift is occupied by Flo, a tea-drinking fusspot
Branagh vs Lear. The big fixture in theatreland ends in a win for Shakespeare’s knotty and intractable script which usually defeats any attempt to make it coherent or dramatically pleasing. This truncated version is a two-hour slug-fest set in the stone age – and it sort of works. The warriors fight with sharpened walking sticks
Two of the world’s great unelected power-brokers met last night at Bletchley Park. Elon Musk and Rishi Sunak held a joint interview after the international conference about AI. Their topic was regulation. ‘What should a government like ours be doing?’ said the PM. What an odd start. Why is the Prime Minister asking a foreign
Lyonesse by Penelope Skinner takes a while to get going. The central character, Elaine, is a washed-up British actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) who lives in a crumbling mansion in Cornwall where she dreams of making a comeback as a movie star. She contacts a clueless researcher, Kate, and asks her to drive down from London
Dominic Cummings showed up at the Covid Inquiry dressed in his signature white shirt. Plus, in a nod to formality, he’d added a shoe-string tie , rakishly askew. He was interrogated by Hugo Keith KC, a lawyer with a plausible manner and an expensive tailor. He looked like one of those shiny new MPs with
Sexism struck early in Rachel Reeves’s life. Last night the shadow chancellor gave a talk about her new book on female economists, and she recalled an early brush with toxic masculinity. Aged eight, competing in a public chess tournament, she faced a little boy who foresaw a swift and easy victory. ‘Lucky I’m playing a
A harrowing session at PMQs. Rishi Sunak seemed subdued and de-energised. His fizz had gone flat. The usual hip-wriggling shuffle at the despatch had been replaced with a hunched, anxious pose. Heavy shoulders. Head drooping. The Middle East crisis has snapped his elastic. The issue Sir Keir had ducked was Gaza. Too hot to handle
The first play by the pioneering feminist Caryl Churchill has been revived at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Owners, originally staged in 1972, feels very different from Churchill’s later work and it recalls the apprentice efforts of Brecht who started out writing middle-class comedies tinged with satirical anger. Churchill sets her play in the cut-throat London