Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Deceptively attractive. Romeo and Juliet tempts directors and leads them on while keeping all its false doors and secret pitfalls out of view. Rupert Goold’s RSC production is two fifths good and three fifths indifferent. A respectable score. This lovely, tricky and rather silly play isn’t the work of a genius but of a jobbing
Up, up, up! It was the only way he could go. For the last couple of months Ed Miliband has arrived at PMQs like a hapless fag with his bottom ready-stripped for a ritual flogging from Flashman. Today he made a proper fight of it. This was his best PMQs performance since his debut. He’s
His brain clouded with opium fumes, Jean Cocteau wrote Les Parents Terribles in just one week. It opens like a Greek tragedy crossed with a madcap sitcom. The ageing beauty Yvonne prances around her Bohemian apartment pining and weeping for her son, Michael, who has gone missing. When he turns up safe and sound, she
At last Wednesday’s PMQs Cameron kicked Ed Miliband into touch with a debonair swagger. Today anger replaced disdain. The PM’s eye-popping rage is so palpable that some commentators take it for vulnerability or even a hint of self-doubt. Milband has Cameron rattled? Nothing of the sort. Cameron just can’t control himself. Asked about the
Christmas approaches. And kitchens and playrooms across the land resound with the joyous tinkle of little Josephs and Marys rehearsing their roles in the Nativity play. My four-year-old son, making his debut in a farmyard cameo, has just one line, ‘I’m a donkey and I’m very tired,’ which he repeats endlessly to the delight of
Back from Zurich, where he’s been helping FIFA determine the winner of the world’s greatest bribery festival, Cameron was in hearty form at PMQs today. He faced Ed Miliband who looks increasingly like the life and soul of the funeral. His party is riding high in the polls – but only when he’s away. As
Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. James Crabtree, the Financial Times’s comment editor, deplored the way our war leader’s bust had been ‘removed from the White House’ by an incoming Barack
The Nobel prize is nothing. The real badge of literary greatness is the addition of the ‘esque’ suffix to one’s name and, if you’re truly outstanding, the word ‘nightmare’, too. Franz Kafka manages this distinguished double, although some readers find the connotations of horror arise not so much from his totalitarian dystopias as from his
Cameron clearly doesn’t rate Ed Miliband. That may be a mistake in the long run but it worked fine today. The opposition leader returned to PMQs after a fortnight’s paternity leave and Cameron welcomed him with some warm ceremonial waffle about the new baby. Then came a joke. ‘I know what it’s like,’ said Cameron,
As she prepares for the role of Mrs Malaprop, Penelope Keith talks to Lloyd Evans, who finds her decisive, cheerful, pragmatic and modest, with a tendency to break into fits of unexpected giggles A winter off. That’s what Penelope Keith had planned for this year. But when an opportunity arrived to play Mrs Malaprop in
War, debt and recession. Last month’s Strategic Defence and Security Review had to confront a unique combination of difficulties. Secretary of State Liam Fox, opening the Spectator conference on the future of defence procurement, explained the review’s aims. Proudly identifying himself as ‘a hawk on defence and on deficit reduction’ he re-stated his commitment to
Ed Hall, boss of the Hampstead theatre, places before our consideration a new play by Athol Fugard. The gong-grabbing, apartheid-drubbing South African author creates dramas that are rich in humanity and compassion, filled with curiosity about the architecture of suffering, and distinguished by flights of poetic soulfulness. And by God, they’re dull. Fugard doesn’t do
The giraffe was back. Hattie Harman came to PMQs today wearing That Frock with its eccentric pattern of burnt umber pentagonals framed by light squiggly outlines. A great colour scheme for camouflaging giraffes in Africa. And an even better one for attracting attention in the house. Why does Hattie feel herself particularly giraffic? Her noble
As Iraq fades from view so does our outrage at the crimes it provoked. Three monologues by Judith Thompson may cure our amnesia. Forgetting atrocities is an essential preliminary to repeating them. We meet a girl soldier (based on Lynndie England although not identified as her), who faces trial for brutalising prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Writhe, squirm, cringe and cower. The Commons wanted to inflict ritual punishments on Nick Clegg today for his broken pledges on student fees. The plan nearly succeeded. With Cameron in China, (finding out what happened to our manufacturing base), Clegg took his place at the dispatch box opposite Harriet Harman. Long practice has given
Just a few hours after the publication of the strategic defence and security review, two crack teams of speakers clashed over the future of the armed forces at a Spectator debate sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. The novelist and military historian Brigadier Allan Mallinson proposed the motion — ‘The army, navy and air force are so
A wretched, stinking, mouldy, crumbling slice of old Glasgae toon has dropped on to the Lyttelton stage. Ena Lamont Stewart’s play, Men Should Weep, is an enthralling act of homage to her slum childhood and it follows the travails of the Morrison family, all nine of them, wedged into two filthy rooms in Glasgow’s east
Miliband’s in a mess. He makes it far too easy for Cameron to portray him as a hypocritical opportunist who sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. How come? Perhaps because he sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. Today he tried to unsettle the
I couldn’t wait for this one. Nina Raine’s debut play Rabbit was a blast. With exquisite scalpel-work she dissected the romantic entanglements of a quartet of posh young professionals. Her new effort, Tribes, opens on similar terrain. A family of bourgeois Londoners are seated around the dinner table punishing each other with rhetorical flick-knives. Dad
Weak again. For the second session in a row Miliband was feeble at PMQs. He opened in his quiet-assassin mode with a quickie question. ‘There are reports that the government is planning changes to housing benefit reforms. Are they?’ Clearly he meant to wrong-foot Cameron by tempting him into admission which could be instantly disproved.
