Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
David Cameron and Tony Blair faced identical tasks earlier this week. Both wished to force a reluctant group of back-sliders to adopt a more robust and pragmatic position. Cameron wanted Europe to toughen up against Putin. Blair wanted Labour to toughen up against Cameron. Blair’s opportunity was the 20th anniversary of his enthronement as Labour’s
Torben Betts, head boy at Alan Ayckbourn’s unofficial school of apprentices, has written at least a dozen plays I’ve never seen. Invincible, my first encounter with the heir apparent, is a sitcom that pitches London snobs against northern slobs. The script is fascinating because it demonstrates, in concentrated form, the limitations of the Ayckbourn method
Mr Bean, one of our greatest comic exports, has an alter ego. The second Mr Bean, forename Richard, is the author of One Man, Two Guvnors, which thrilled audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. His latest play, Great Britain, dissects the corruption of power in parliament and beyond. The inevitable comparisons with The Duck
It was the final PMQs before the sun-stroke season begins. Usually these are high-spirited Derby Day affairs and Ed Miliband came to the house knowing things could hardly be easier. A political grenade has just been lobbed into the prime minister’s bunker – by the prime minister himself. He’s sacked two of his closest allies
Hampstead’s new play about the 1984 miners’ strike was nearly defeated by technical glitches. Centre stage in Ed Hall’s production there’s a clanking great iron chute that stubbornly refused to go up and down when ordered. A bit like the miners. The writer, Beth Steel, is a collier’s daughter and she romanticises the pit workers
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_10_July_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Lloyd Evans and Kate Maltby discuss the National Theatre’s funding” startat=1261] Listen [/audioplayer]Two glorious playhouses grace the south bank of the Thames. Shakespeare’s Globe and the National Theatre stage the finest shows available anywhere in the world. Both are kept in business by the play-going public who last year helped the Globe to
Today we saw a brand new Ed Miliband. And a brand new campaign strategy. He’s given up trying to win the election. All he wants to do now is to enjoy losing it and to go down in style. This must be quite a relief to him. For the next 10 months he can ignore
Two glorious playhouses grace the south bank of the Thames. Shakespeare’s Globe and the National Theatre stage the finest shows available anywhere in the world. Both are kept in business by the play-going public who last year helped the Globe to turn over £21 million, with a surplus of £3.7 million. Audiences also flocked in
Fashion Victim — the Musical!. There’s a title that’s been waiting to be used for ages. The Cinema Museum is a frumpy warehouse, tucked away in a Kennington backwater, crammed with big-screen memorabilia. A cobwebby salon fitted with a catwalk serves as the theatre. Charmingly camp Carl Mullaney kicks things off by introducing the cast
It was damn close. And it scored top marks for effort. Miliband’s plan today was to prove that Cameron’s NHS policy is a disaster. And to prove it with Cameron’s own admissions. Or omissions. ‘It’s four years since his top-down re-organisation of the NHS,’ began Miliband in that quiet, meticulous manner that always foretells a
Nice one, Roy. Across the West End secret toasts are being drunk to the England supremo for his exquisitely crafted belly flop in Brazil. A decent run by our boys in the World Cup has the potential to put a nasty dent in the box-office takings. As a welcome home present the lads deserve free
A mixed case arrives from Corney & Barrow. My orders are to improvise so I pull out a bottle at random. Here it is. El Campesino, a 2013 Chardonnay (£7.13), from Chile, which has a full, direct flavour and a slightly bitter tang that cuts against the sweetness. The Dionysian experts who scour the earth
The pressure was all on Miliband today. With Cameron hurt, he needed to show that he can still press home an advantage. First, we all had to listen to the Speaker, who rather enjoys listening to himself. He began with a long and winding overture about the dangers of prejudicing the Coulson trial. One sentence
‘Oompa Loompa juice,’ says the actor Alex Jennings when I ask if he takes any supplements to preserve his looks. He’s 57 but could pass for a decade younger. We meet backstage in his Drury Lane suite, which boasts a fridge crammed with pink champagne, where he’s preparing to play the lead role in Charlie
Fans of Chekhov have to endure both feast and famine. Feast because his works are revived everywhere. Famine because he concentrated all his riches in just four great plays that grow stale with repetition. For fresh nourishment we turn to Brian Friel, whose stage adaptations of the short stories go some way to appease our
Explosive stuff at PMQs. Question two and Sir Peter Tapsell, the Father of the House, was called. This quaint semi-official title makes him, potentially, the chamber’s most dependable bore. Not today. He called on backbenchers to enact their ‘ancient but still existing power’ to commence procedures of impeachment against ‘the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair’. Not
It’s hilarious. It’s also annoying that it’s so hilarious. Jonathan Munby’s earthy and glamorous production of Antony and Cleopatra goes almost too far to please the Globe’s fidgety, giggly crowds. The Egyptian queen is often treated as a female Lear, a trophy role, a lap of honour for a transatlantic facelift as she enters her
If there’s a problem in Birmingham it’s too gnarled and subtle for PMQs. Easy sling-shots and grabby sloganising are all that’s required. Ed Miliband had found a simple point of entry to the issue. Buck-passing. Who, he asked, is responsible for monitoring schools that incubate extremism? listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron and Miliband’ on Audioboo
Lionel is a king of the New York art scene. An internationally renowned connoisseur, he travels the world creating and destroying fortunes. He anoints a masterpiece, here. He defenestrates a forgery, there. He visits the Californian city of Bakersfield (code in America for Nowheresville) to determine the authenticity of a Jackson Pollock bought for three
Joan Littlewood’s greatest disservice to the theatre was to champion ‘the right to fail’, which encouraged writers and directors to inflict a thousand shades of bilge on play-goers for many decades. But she deserves a place in the pantheon for an inspired decision taken in 1959. Offered a new play about Soho’s underworld, written by
