Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Jeremy Corbyn wanted to repeat last week’s victory on Universal Credit. He landed no serious blows but he made the government look silly in its handling of the reforms. Mrs May brought up Labour’s record, and the ‘tax credit’ merry-go-round devised by Gordon Brown. Voters were fleeced by one arm of government and reimbursed by
Simon Stephens gives his plays misleading titles. Nuclear War, Pornography and Punk Rock contained little trace of their advertised ingredients. Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle includes no information about the German physicist or his theories. This is a sentimental romcom starring Anne-Marie Duff as a giggling airhead who stalks a grunting Cockney shopkeeper played by Kenneth
PMQs began with an announcement. The life president of the John Bercow fan-club rose from the Speaker’s chair to welcome a distinguished Dutch parliamentarian sitting up in the gallery. No one recognised the name of this blow-in from the land of windmills. But he is no doubt as important in his own domestic circle as
Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict colliery town in the East Midlands where the new MP is a malleable Blairite greaser, David Lyons. He arrives to find the office in crisis. The constituency agent, Jean, has handed in her notice but
Theresa May needed to play a blinder today. But she left herself looking heartless and complacent. Jeremy Corbyn attacked her on the Universal Credit system which seems as useful as a windmill on the moon. He said UC was leading to ‘debt, poverty and homelessness.’ Mrs May replied that tremendous improvements had been achieved since January.
In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus inspires a rambling 90-minute monologue. ‘An avalanche of tosh’ was the Daily Mail’s succinct summary. Wings is similar but worse. Mrs Stilson (Juliet Stevenson), an American pensioner sheathed in white, hovers over the stage on
Tristan Bernays loves Hollywood blockbusters. His new play, Boudica, is an attempt to put the blood-and-guts vibe of the action flick on the Globe’s stage. The pacy plotting works well. Boudica revolts against the Romans who have stolen her kingdom. The queen is imprisoned and flogged while her two maiden daughters are savagely violated. Vowing
Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this imported version has arrived at the National on its way to a prebooked run at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s bound to be a hit because it’s good fun, it gives a knotty political theme
Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew each other three decades earlier at a New York music hall. The building faces demolition and the owner is throwing a party for his old dancing-girls. Dominic Cooke’s lavish production of this vintage musical boasts
The news was bad at PMQs today. Gosh, it was terrible. Layla Moran started by announcing that Brexit would jeopardise thousands of jobs in Abingdon and wreck the local economy. Theresa May told her to stop spooking the voters with imaginary pessimism. ‘It’s what they’re telling me!’ shouted Ms Moran. Daniel Zeichner said the scourge
A new orthodoxy governs the casting process in Hollywood. An actor’s ethnicity must match the character’s. If you extend this decree to Shakespeare, you need Macbeth to be played by a Highlander, Shylock by a Venetian Jew, Richard III by an English hunchback and Cleopatra by an Egyptian who has slept with her brother. As
Mrs May was back to her former self today. Cool, brusque, snappy and effective. Electoral disaster has served her well. Is it possible she planned this all along? Having brilliantly sacrificed her majority, she’s now indispensable to her weakened party. Her lack of defences defends her. Just one Commons defeat and Corbyn could walk into
Against by Christopher Shinn sets out to unlock the secrets of America’s spiritual malaise. Two main settings represent the wealthy and the dispossessed. At a university campus, an inquisitive Jesus-freak named Luke interrogates people about their experiences of violence. At an online retailer, oppressed wage slaves toil for hours and mate fleetingly during their tea
Truman Capote should have been called Truman Persons. His father, Archulus, abbreviated his first name and introduced himself as Arch Persons. ‘And that,’ scoffed his son, ‘sounded like a flock of bishops.’ The young scribbler was thrilled when his divorced mother married a rich Cuban, Joseph Capote, whose zippy and eccentric name he gladly adopted.
Brexit the Musical is a peppy satire written by Chris Bryant (not the MP, he’s a lawyer). Musically the show is excellent and the impressions of Boris and Dave are amusing enough, but the storyline doesn’t work and the script moves in for the kill with blunted weapons. Everyone is forgiven as soon as they
What is the Edinburgh Fringe? It’s a sabbatical, a pit stop, a pause-and-check-the-map opportunity for actors who don’t quite know where to go next. Alison Skilbeck has written a ‘serio-comic celebration’ of Shakespeare and her performance attracts a decent crowd for a show that starts at noon. She plays a fruity-voiced thesp, Artemis Turret, who
‘Some wine? How about a beer? Shall we settle into a good old pub?’ I make these suggestions to Ukip’s interim leader, Steve Crowther, as we meet in central London, but he opts for a quiet bistro where he orders a cup of tea. He has a dapper suit, a ruddy, forceful face and a
‘Some wine? How about a beer? Shall we settle into a good old pub?’ I make these suggestions to Ukip’s interim leader, Steve Crowther, as we meet in central London, but he opts for a quiet bistro where he orders a cup of tea. He has a dapper suit, a ruddy, forceful face and a
Conor McPherson’s new play is set in dust-bowl Minnesota in 1934. We’re in a fly-blown boarding house owned by skint, kindly Nick who has designs on a sexy widow with a big inheritance coming. Good opening. Roll the story. But there’s more. Nick’s useless son is a depressed novelist entangled with a beautiful governess betrothed
The Edinburgh Festival was founded as a response to war. The inaugural event, held in 1947, was the brainchild of Rudolf Bing, the manager of Glyndebourne Opera, and Henry Harvey Wood, a British Council grandee. Both were convinced that a festival of music and theatre was needed to restore the artistic heritage of Europe after
