Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
It’s the usual old muddle. You take a Shakespeare classic and you time-travel it to an alien century, usually the present one, which has no connection with its historic setting. The plan, we’re always told, is to generate that supremely irrelevant attribute, ‘relevance’. Director Dominic Cooke has fast-forwarded The Comedy of Errors to modern London
Ed Miliband had an open goal today. And he whacked it straight over the bar. Cameron was in trouble from the start. Having placated the rebel wing of his party with vague talk about ‘repatriating powers’ he is now expected to deliver. But he can’t make specific demands without weakening his hand at the negotiations
They can’t even be bothered to think of a decent title. Good thing too. The Riots, at the Trike, is a rush job, a gripping and pacey attempt to analyse the disturbances that engulfed Britain last August. Cops, criminals and community leaders have been interviewed by Gillian Slovo, who fashioned their statements into a dramatic
It was vicious. It was frenetic. It was full of rage and class-hatred. It was great political sport. If you like a serious punch-up, the Commons at mid-day was the place to be. The viewing figures at home were boosted by the many millions of strikers who couldn’t quite make their local anti-cuts demo and
It’s a palace drama with all the trimmings. Trevor Nunn’s new production, The Lion in Winter, plunges us into the court of Henry II and his spurned wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, as they struggle to decide which of their three sons should inherit the throne. Eleanor, held prisoner in a deluxe royal fortress, has been
If Roman Abramovich owned the Labour party, Ed Miliband would be toast by now. The floundering opposition leader gave the sort of inept, predictable and ill-organised performance at PMQs that would get a manager sacked in the Premiership. It scarcely helps that Mr Miliband seems to prepare for these sessions like a deluded psychic. He
‘I’m off to see a play about a man who kills his dad,’ I told my five-year-old as I left the house. ‘Because he didn’t give him any ice-cream?’ he said. Mmm, I wondered, it’s possible that Hamlet harboured some childhood grudge against Claudius over a Mr Whippy refusal episode. But such meta-textual speculation is
I take no pleasure in saying this but the director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, appears to have lost his sense of propriety. Or possibly the balance of his mind. He’s asked John Hodge (author of the Trainspotting screenplay) to write a sitcom about the Great Terror. And, rather than bunging it in the
Hot summer, drippy autumn. Ed Miliband’s performances have declined steeply after the heady highs of July. He came to PMQs today badly needing to fight like a champion. Things looked rosy for him at the weekend. And they got better overnight. We learned that a pilot scheme to fast-track incoming tourists last summer had allowed
Long may it lie in ruins. Wilton’s Music Hall, in the East End of London, is a wondrous slice of Victoriana which exploits its failing grandeur to the max. All visitors are implored to find a couple of quid for the restoration effort. But decay and dilapidation are the best things about it. Every wrinkled
Last night, as we mentioned yesterday and the day before, was The Spectator’s debate on whether Britain should cut its overseas aid budget. Here, for CoffeeHousers who couldn’t attend the event, is Lloyd Evans’ review of it: Chair: Rod Liddle Proposing: Ian Birrell, Richard Dowden, Stephen Glover Opposing: Prof Paul Collier, Alan Duncan MP,
The Hair Shirt walked abroad at PMQs today. Those attending the Square Mile sleepover finally forced their agenda into the political mainstream. The question is, what is their agenda? A protest that doesn’t define its programme allows others to define it for them. And today both party leaders tried to harness the anti-capitalist spirit for
It sounds like mission impossible. To celebrate this year’s 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, the RSC set itself the task of mounting a play about the controversies surrounding the translation. A drama, therefore, entirely lacking in drama. No action or spectacle, no romance or comedy, no surprise twists or last-minute poisonings. Just people
Fashionable Londoners go to the Donmar Warehouse to engage in shut-eye chic. It’s a weird way to relax. You buy a ticket to John Osborne’s 1964 classic, Inadmissable Evidence, and you sleep through most of its two and a half hours. All around me were seats full of happy dozers. How I envied them. Mind
Easy-peasy at PMQs today. All Ed Miliband had to do was slice open the Coalition’s wounds on Europe and dibble his claws in the spouts of blood. But his attack had no sense of bite or surprise. And his phraseology was lumpen. He used all six questions gently stroking the issue of Europe rather than
At last, it’s reached the West End. Lee Hall’s hit play, The Pitmen Painters, tells the heartening tale of some talented Geordie colliers who won national acclaim as artists during the 1930s. Hall, who wrote Billy Elliot, has done extremely well from a pretty limited set of dramatic techniques. He draws each of his coal
Alive or dead? At PMQs today we discovered whether Dr Fox is still an active toxin within Cameron’s government. Ed Miliband, using that special quiet voice he likes to try when he’s got a deadly question, described the affair as ‘deeply worrying’, and asked how on earth the prime minister could have let it all
Here’s an idea from the heyday of radio comedy. A soap star about to get the chop improvises an unscripted deathbed recovery during a live broadcast in order to save his career. I think it was Tony Hancock who starred in that sketch. To expand it into a full-length play would be quite a challenge.
The theatre world is abuzz with rumours that Michael Boyd, director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has quit this afternoon. He was appointed in July 2002 and was expected to complete at least a decade in charge. His colleague Vikki Heywood is also expected to resign. Boyd will probably be best remembered for overseeing the
Riots at theatres, commonplace before the Great War, have mysteriously gone out of fashion. J.M. Synge’s classic, The Playboy of the Western World, was disrupted many times during its opening week in 1907 by Dubliners who objected to its portrayal of the rural poor in the west of Ireland. Strange that, feigning outrage on behalf
