Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
The Mountaintop Trafalgar Studios Hello Dolly! Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park Meet the black Elvis. A man who got up on stage, a man who ‘sang’, a man who was adored by millions, a man who was King. Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, is set in a Memphis hotel on the eve of Martin Luther
Edinburgh is a flashers’ convention. Edinburgh is a flashers’ convention. Everyone wants exposure. They come to build their brand, to raise recognition levels among the oblivious, to smuggle themselves into your brain while you’re not looking. So don’t feel obliged to buy a ticket. Your attendance is sufficient reward. Performers know the fringe is a
Lloyd Evans goes in search of culture on the rain-soaked streets of Edinburgh The crunch. That damn credit crunch. It hurt Scotland hardest of all. A worldwide reputation as a financial powerhouse? Gone. Dreams of independence? Severely truncated. Last year the Edinburgh Festival bore prophetic signs of imminent poverty, of homelessness, of doom. Free shows
The Girlfriend Experience Young Vic Helen Globe Who exploits prostitutes? Men, of course. And women, too. In particular those feminist politicians, always at panic stations, always posing as moral redeemers, who promote the myth that there’s only one type of hooker in this country — the crackhead Albanian rape-slave living in an airing cupboard —
A Streetcar Named Desire Donmar Too Close to the Sun Comedy Kissed by Brel Jermyn Street Streetcar opens with a strange spectacle. Christopher Oram’s lovely — too lovely — design has the upper circle decked out in peeling ironwork which soars across the boards and modulates into a chic spiral staircase overlooking the Kowalski’s open-plan
Lloyd Evans celebrates Tennyson’s miraculous musicality ‘He had the finest ear of any English poet,’ said W.H. Auden. ‘He was also, undoubtedly, the stupidest.’ This famous jibe aimed at Tennyson (whose bicentenary falls on 6 August) is revealing in its shrill and almost triumphant bitchiness. Every age rejects the one before and it’s no surprise
Spike Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall Hampstead The Black Album Cottesloe Good old Spike. Wonderful, charming, innocent Spike who could skewer authority with a child’s unthinking acuity. ‘Where were you born?’ asked the recruiting sergeant when he was conscripted. ‘India,’ said Spike. ‘Which part?’ ‘All of me.’ Ben Power and Tim Carroll
Jerusalem Royal Court Dreams of Violence Soho Lock him up. On paper, the central character of Jez Butterworth’s new play looks like a worthless nuisance, a menace to society. Rooster Byron lives in a derelict caravan and earns cash by supplying children with controlled drugs. He’s a scroundrel, a drunkard, a liar, a sponger, a
Avenue Q Gielgud Death of Long Pig Finborough It opened in 2006. The critics hated it. Two years later it was still running, but with audiences in decline last autumn Cameron Mackintosh announced its closure, which prompted a huge box-office surge. In the spring it was finally replaced by Calendar Girls but Avenue Q has
One of the strangest and most dramatic parliamentary terms ended today in bizarre fashion. The fiasco over fiddled expenses has preoccupied Westminster for months but it was helicopters in Afghanistan that dominated PMQs. From whoppers to choppers. The Speaker seems to have ruled against public lamentations over battlefield casualties and, without these solemnities, our MPs
Forbidden Broadway Menier Chocolate Factory Dr Korczak’s Example Arcola High hopes at the Chocolate Factory. The Southbank’s liveliest producing house has a great record for taking shows into the West End. Musicals are a speciality and the latest has just arrived from New York. Forbidden Broadway was created nearly three decades ago by rookie writer
There was a wonderful outbreak of wit and erudition at Parliament this morning. The sketch-writers Simon Hoggart and Matthew Parris appeared before the Public Administration Select Committee to discuss the perils of political jargon. Simon Hoggart kicked off by imagining Churchill’s war-time speeches re-written by a local government wonk. ‘We will fight on the beaches’
I’d be tempted to call it listless. But everyone was reading from lists. At today’s rather sleepy PMQs I counted six MPs who recorded their sympathy for those affected by the recent tragedies in Afghanistan and Camberwell. The Speaker needs to act or these sessions will turn into Prime Minister’s Condolences. Gordon Brown’s in Italy,
Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme Hampstead Carrie’s War Apollo I want to be nice about this play but I simply can’t. Look at the idiotic title for starters. Frank McGuinness sets his drama in an Ulster barracks where a gang of recruits are preparing to fight the Hun in France. The
Open up your political lexicons. Inscribe this one in permanent ink. We’ll be laughing about it for years to come. Answering a question at PMQs on budget reductions, Gordon Brown promised that in 2013/14 there would be ‘a zero percent rise’ in spending. This bizarre piece of tweak-onomics was flung straight back at him by
The Cherry Orchard Old Vic A Skull in Connemara Riverside Here’s a peculiarity of Chekhov productions that tour the world. There’s never any furniture. OK, there’s some. A card table maybe, a few spindly chairs, a samovar, a hat-stand, the odd stool. Matchwood accessories. But the sturdy oaken mammoths of Victorian decor, the chests and
Make the chair smaller. Or sit on a box. John Bercow’s first overhaul of parliamentary structures should involve re-fitting the seat to accommodate his pint-sized proportions. He looked a little stranded up on his perch at PMQs today and at the end he had to be helped back down to the ground. This was a
Crack! The sound of the whips lashing Labour MPs into line today was deafening. And the truth didn’t have a prayer. What a draining, depressing, undemocratic spectacle it was to see Labour’s doomed time-servers put in yet another shift at the government’s whopper-factory. Cameron went to the House with a single tactic, to get the
The Winter’s Tale Old Vic Phèdre Lyttelton I seem to be alone in feeling great waves of pity for anyone involved in an assault on The Winter’s Tale. This strange dud of a text remains mystifyingly popular with theatre folk. It’s two plays shunted together. Act one is a mawkish palace tragedy, act two is
Usually it’s the war-dead who overshadow the start of PMQs. Today it was the undead. Brown is back and if the Labour rebels really believed his promise to ‘listen’ their trust seems to have been misplaced. This was the Brown of old, the unbudgeable slab of granite, the obsessive numerologist casting statistics in all directions
