Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
What’s going on? Everyone’s doing playlets all of a sudden. I saw five this week. The Donmar is presenting a trio of scripts by Robert Holman entitled Making Noise Quietly. A silly title. ‘A writers’ writer’ — an even sillier cliché — is how the programme notes describe Holman. If they mean ‘a boring writer’
Be still, at last, you clamouring brainboxes. Those who long for more highbrow drama in the West End can thank God for David Edgar’s Written on the Heart. Commissioned by the RSC, this celebratory play tells the story of the King James Bible, which was first published in 1612. Making scripture accessible to the masses
Ed Miliband led on the economy at PMQs. But he was only warming himself up for the main event. Leveson dominated proceedings. David Cameron lamented the ‘disappointing’ news that the country has slipped back into negative growth. ‘It’s all bluster,’ crowed Miliband. ‘His plan has failed.’ This recession was made in Downing Street, he said,
Once you grasp the essential triviality of the Olympics, the Cultural Olympiad falls perfectly into place, says Lloyd Evans. Even Shakespeare can’t escape Once you grasp the essential triviality of the Olympics, the Cultural Olympiad falls perfectly into place, says Lloyd Evans. Even Shakespeare can’t escape Funny business the Olympics. No one seems to want
Great title, Long Day’s Journey into Night. The sombre, majestic words are suffused with auguries of doom. ‘A play of old sorrow written in tears and blood,’ was O’Neill’s description of the script, which is inspired by his personal background. We’re in a beautiful seaside mansion where a prosperous New York family, the Tyrones, are
Tim Minchin swept the board at the Oliviers last Sunday. The Australian’s hit musical, Matilda, won a record seven gongs at the West End’s most prestigious awards ceremony. The rise of Minchin has been stratospheric. Just eight years ago he started out on the Melbourne cabaret circuit performing quizzical spoofs like ‘Inflatable You’, a ballad
An ebook arrives! The future of publishing on my hard-drive. All the big profits are in cyber-publishing these days, as I discovered last month when I downloaded an ebook for three quid and found it contained just 85 pages. This one, by Alwyn W. Turner, has only 72 pages, but it’s a penny cheaper at
And on it rumbles. Last month’s budget seems to have created more niche-losers than any tax settlement in history. Those who feel deprived are still squealing about it. At PMQs today Ed Miliband took a swipe at the Prime Minister on their behalf. Billionaires get bungs, grannies get mugged. That’s the headline Miliband was aiming
Not yet, since you ask. And I doubt if I ever will. My aversion to multiplex cinemas, with their cheerless foyers and their hordes of texting, tweeting cola-hydrated popcorn-gobblers, has deterred me from seeing new movies lately. The King’s Speech eluded me until it arrived, in its original form as a play, in the West
John Webster had one amazing skill. He could craft lines that glow in the memory like radioactive gems. ‘A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil; he fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard.’ Eliot loved him. Pinter used to stroll around the parks of Hackney shouting his soundbites into the sky.
It’s back. And I can’t believe I missed it the first time. Live Theatre’s dramatisation of Chris Mullin’s diaries has returned to Soho for a lap of honour. Richly deserved as well. The show moves unobtrusively between Mullin’s many spheres of interest. We see his home life as a father of two and as MP
The Spectator recently held a debate at the Royal Geographic Society with the motion ‘Immigration: Enough is Enough’. Proposing it were Frank Field MP, Dominic Raab MP and Kiran Bali MBE JP. Opposing were Oliver Kamm, Jenni Russell and David Aaronovitch. Andrew Neil chaired. Here is Lloyd Evans’ review: ‘I’m a coward,’ admitted Frank Field,
There should be a sign on the door. ‘Plotless play in progress.’ Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, by Errol John, won first prize in a 1957 scriptwriting competition organised by Kenneth Tynan and judged by Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, Peter Hall and others. The West End promoters thought the script uncommercial and never gave it
‘It is the determined policy of this government to keep Wallace and Gromit exactly where they are.’ So proclaimed George Osborne in his Budget speech yesterday, as he announced new tax credits for the video games, animation and televesion industries. But what prompted this? Had he been reading The Spectator? In an interview for the
It started like a bit of good old political knockabout. PMQs opened with a planted question from Mark Menzies (Con, Fylde) asking the PM about Britain’s sick-note culture. Cameron, looking suitably grave, declared that the fake-sniffle problem afflicts even senior management. Ed Miliband, he told us, had recently claimed he was too ill to attend
Calling all thespians. Roll up, you theatre folk. The Hampstead’s new show is a dramatic love-in you can’t afford to miss. Farewell to the Theatre introduces us to Harley Granville-Barker, one of the greatest playwrights of the early 20th century, as he enjoys a sabbatical in Massachusetts in 1916. Everything is languid, atmospheric and high-minded.
Basketball in America. Netball at PMQs. Harriet Harman, Labour’s venerable form-prefect, took her leader’s place today and lobbed a few rubbery missiles at the PM’s under-study, Nick Clegg. It came down to arithmetic. Even if Hattie had stormed it at PMQs she had no hope of reviving her extinct career. But Clegg has it all
Jackie Mason, the New York stand-up, looks very strange. It’s as if somebody shrank Tony Bennett and microwaved him for two hours. Mason is short, dark, troll-like, densely built, with shining bulbous lips and a twinkly expression of diabolical mischief. His hair gathers over his head in a wave of red-brown crinkliness. For his solo
A sombre and muted PMQs this week. Dame Joan Ruddock raised the issue of benefits and asked David Cameron if he was proud of his new reforms. Tory backbenchers cheered on the PM’s behalf. ‘Then would he look me in the eye,’ Dame Joan went on, ‘and tell me he’s proud to have removed all
Strange sort of classic, Hay Fever. Written when Noël Coward was an unknown actor, it won him no converts among producers. He couldn’t get anyone to stage it. The title is weak and vague. The script lacks incident and action. And the humour is more subtle than audiences were used to. Only after Coward had
