Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Smiley, fluent and softly spoken, John McDonnell sometimes comes across as a bit cuddly. Yesterday Labour’s shadow chancellor was interviewed by Iain Dale at the Edinburgh festival. He said he’s looking forward to a boating trip on the Norfolk Broads. ‘My wife and I sail. But we sail badly. People get off the water when
Games for Lovers feels like a smart, sexy TV comedy. Martha is still in love with her old flame Logan whose new girlfriend has a huge libido which he can’t hope to satisfy. When Martha starts flat-hunting she answers an advert coincidentally posted by Logan’s best friend, Darren. Thus, perhaps too neatly, the two warring
The PM’s partner has one of the toughest jobs in politics even though it’s not a political appointment. That’s the nub of the difficulty. The role is undefined and unpaid. And whatever the partner does can be labelled a blunder and used to attack the prime minister. I’ve just written a play, ‘Cherie – My
Equus is a psychological thriller from 1973 which opens with a revolting discovery. An unbalanced stable-lad, Alan, spends his evenings taking the horses out for an illicit gallop. Meanwhile, he’s busy seducing a hot young cowgirl at the farm but his awakening sexuality confuses him. The girl’s erotic nature brings out his closeted gay side
Forget Churchill. Never mind the Iron Duke. Ignore the claims of Pitt the Younger. The greatest prime minister in British history is Theresa May. That was the message from PMQs today. Tory after Tory stood up to heap praise on their departing chief. Wages are up. Homelessness is falling. Employment is on the rise, thanks
Only one person in Britain now believes that Boris might deprive us of a Jeremy Hunt premiership. That person is Jeremy Hunt. The rest of us expect the ‘Blonde Ambition’ project to reach fruition and for Boris to enter Number 10. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows him. Nature always marked
The National Theatre’s boss, Rufus Norris, has confessed that he ‘took his eye off the ball’ when it came to female writers and he plans to strike an equal balance between the sexes in future. Good news for male scribblers who’ll know that they’ve been selected on merit but rather demoralising for females who’ll suspect
A thin turnout for Theresa May’s penultimate PMQs. Labour members were skulking in corridors plotting to oust their leader. And Tories, especially devout Remainers, were busy talking to journalists about their lifelong commitment to a no-deal Brexit. Mrs May seemed to be angling for the post of chief attack dog at the next election. Jeremy
Europe. Big word. Big theme. It was used by David Greig as the title of his 1994 play about frontiers in the age of mass migration. The setting is a railway station in eastern Europe and it opens like a kids’ TV show with each character entering and doing something ‘typical’. Everyone is either good
The US jobs miracle continues. Donald Trump has just created another vacancy at the British embassy in Washington. Sir Kim Darroch’s resignation was the opening issue at PMQs and Theresa May expressed her shock and regret at the diplomat’s departure, ‘after a lifetime of service to this country,’ she added pointedly. Sir Kim isn’t the
Present Laughter introduces us to a chic, louche and highly successful theatrical globetrotter, Garry Essendine, whose riotous social life is centred on his swish London apartment. This is Noël Coward’s version of Noël Coward. In the script, from 1942, Coward alleges that his alter ego is being chased by three women. The in crowd would
PMQs is clearly broken and only Brexiteers know how to fix it. Theresa May should leave. Jeremy Corbyn should remain and put questions to Boris next week and to Jeremy Hunt the week after. A test of both candidates in match conditions would be welcomed by all. But it won’t happen. A Tory party that
Bitter Wheat, David Mamet’s latest play, features a loathsome Hollywood hotshot, Barney Fein, who offers to turn an actress into a superstar provided she lets him rape her. The show’s gruesome storyline has flashes of bitter comedy. Fein boasts that the Writers Guild of America would ‘drink a beaker of my mucus’ if he forced
Theresa May, our stand-in prime minster, was hit by a surprisingly effective ambush at PMQs. Jeremy Corbyn led on Britain’s involvement in the Yemeni conflict. Last week the Court of Appeal ruled that the government had overlooked Saudi Arabia’s responsibility for breaches of international law. Mrs May sounded desperate as she quoted a legal finding
Kill Climate Deniers is a provocative satire by Australian theatre-activist David Finnigan. The title sounds misanthropic and faintly deranged but the show is a comedy delivered with oodles of verve and fun. Finnigan is a skilful writer of dialogue, a gifted farceur and, at times, an astute analyst of power and its corrupting tendencies. Like
The title ‘Father of the House’ tends to give the bearer a chronic problem with wind. The present holder, Ken Clarke, stood up at PMQs and asked a question of Gibbonian magnitude and complexity. Among the gusts of prose was a useful point about spending. ‘It would be extremely unwise for the outgoing government to
Five hopefuls in a shallow arc of bar-stools. Last night, the BBC summoned the Tory candidates for a Brexit show trial overseen by Emily Maitlis. Michael Gove made an early impact with a burst of crazy egoism. ‘Because I started this, I will finish it.’ He forgot that countless campaigners such as Bill Cash, Dennis
Sometimes it’s hard to describe a play without appearing to defame the writer, the performer and the theatre responsible for the production. Here’s what I saw. A semi-naked woman lurks in a corner, with her back to the audience, shaking. Rap music pounds. The woman shakes and shakes. Then she shakes a bit more. And
Boris Johnson made his pitch to become PM at a spirited mini-rally in central London. He began with a swipe at the stalling economies of the Eurozone which he compared unfavourably with ‘the commercial dynamism of the British people.’ His one-nation pitch bore almost too many adman’s sound-bites. He called England, Wales, Scotland and Northern
Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote the movie Manchester by the Sea, shapes his work from loss, disillusionment, small-mindedness, hesitation and superficiality, all the forgettable detritus of life. The Starry Messenger is about Mark, a disappointed astronomer aged 52, who gives public lectures at a city planetarium. He loves his subject even though it let him down
