Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
War is raging over Canterbury’s future. Only two Labour councillors are left in the whole of Kent, in the north and south of the city, compared to the 57 Reform councillors who now control the county. Reform entirely replaced the Tories, who were left with just five councillors. Canterbury’s tale is one of general decline. The
The Gang of Three gets into the nitty-gritty of Labour politics in the 1970s. It opens with the resignation of Roy Jenkins as deputy leader in 1972 in a desperate attempt to quell the party’s growing hostility to the Common Market. He holds a council of war with Anthony Crosland, his old Oxford chum, and
Kemi Badenoch tried two ambushes at PMQs. She lambasted Sir Keir Starmer for cutting the winter fuel allowance and leaving old folks to shiver through the coldest months of the year. But Sir Keir claimed that he was merely trying to stabilise the economy. Kemi accused him of balancing the books ‘on the backs of
My Master Builder is a new version of Ibsen’s classic with a tweaked title and a transformed storyline. Henry and Elena Solness are a British power couple living in the Hamptons whose relationship is in meltdown after the accidental death of their son. Elena has scrambled to reach the top of the publishing world but
We have two leaders of the opposition. Labour can’t decide which is the larger threat. Prime Minister’s Questions opened with a botched query from Labour backbencher Dan Tomlinson. He asked Sir Keir Starmer to comment on a possible pact between the Tories and Reform. An amazing spectacle. An MP so clueless that he can’t ask a
Tending is a work of activism on behalf of the NHS. The script brings together the testimony of 70 nurses in a show spoken by three performers. It’s full of surprises and shocks. All NHS nurses are obliged to annotate their actions as they work. ‘If you haven’t documented it, you haven’t done it,’ they’re
Women and Sir Keir Starmer. That was the issue that dominated a fiery PMQs today. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch asked Sir Keir if he’d been ‘wrong to say trans women are women.’ His bland but careful answer expressed a wish that ‘service providers’ should obey the ruling. Then he loftily advised the house to ‘lower
Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco is a period piece from 1959. It opens with the invasion of a French village by a herd of rhinoceroses. This paranormal event is never explained. In Act Two, the villagers start to imagine that they’ve become rhinoceroses and changed species. But one plucky sceptic, who defies conformity, refuses to swap
Robert Icke’s new play examines one of the least appetising characters in British criminal history. Raoul Moat went on a shooting spree in July 2010 that left his wife injured, a cop blinded and an innocent man dead. This superb piece of reportage offers us a glimpse into the mind of a damaged brute. Moat
Amanda Abbington’s new show is heavily indebted to Noël Coward’s Hay Fever.Coward’s early play follows the tribulations of the superficial Bliss family and at first it was rejected by producers because it lacked action or incident. The oddly titled show, (This is not a) Happy Room, opens on the eve of a family wedding. Disaster
Kemi Badenoch is doing all right at PMQs. The Tory leader is effective in the build-up but her finishing is weak. The point of the inquisition is make the interviewee tremble with fear. Here’s how she ended each of today’s question to Sir Keir Starmer: ‘What’s his advice to business owners laying off staff?’ ‘Why
My Neighbour Totoro is a hugely successful show based on a Japanese movie made in 1988. The setting is a haunted house occupied by two little girls who encounter various creatures rendered on stage by puppets. The story has no action, danger or jeopardy so it’s likely to bore small boys and their dads. Perhaps
Is Rachel Reeves toast? Not according to her. The Chancellor delivered an aggressively self-confident statement about Labour’s spending plans this afternoon. Soberly dressed in maroon, she rattled through her speech like a garden shredder grinding up branches and reducing them to pale little woodchips. Anyone would think she was pondering a leadership bid. After listing
Just Stop Oil are their own worst enemies. I support their aims and I do my best to minimise my carbon footprint. I haven’t flown since 1993, I don’t own a car and I have eleven solar panels on my roof, but I’m losing patience with the movement. Meeting the JSO activists who disrupted a
Cher Horowitz, the central character in Clueless, is one of the most irritating heroines in the history of movies. She’s a rich, slim, beautiful Beverly Hills princess obsessed with parties, boys and clothing brands. According to her, the world’s problems can easily be settled by using the solutions she applied to the seating plan at
At PMQs this week, Sir Keir Starmer got a proper grilling for a change. Kemi Badenoch used smarter tactics: short questions sharply focused; half-truths instantly rebutted. The Tory leader abandoned her normal habit of covering the entire spectrum of Labour’s shortcomings. She focused on their worst error: economic stagnation caused by the tax-grab Budget. Why,
Punk rock, packaged, parcelled, and boxed up as a treat for nostalgic wrinklies. That’s the deal with Punk Off!, a touring show that recently completed a lap of the country at the Dominion Theatre. Most of the audience were there to recall their rebellious heyday. ‘It’s about to get really, really loud,’ announced the compère,
If Kemi Badenoch has a plan, she’s keeping it hidden. At PMQs she used her scattergun approach to complain about unemployment, farming, winter fuel payments, council tax, increases in NI, business closures, food-aid for underfed kids and the murder of David Amess. Eventually, she reached the chancellor’s awkward ‘spring statement’ which would have made a
Why are women still allowed to do housework? The question used to bother me during the years of my marriage when housework became a running sore between us. Perhaps the friction was inevitable. I was born in revolutionary times, the 1960s, and my mother taught me and my siblings to cook, clean and wash up
The Score is a fine example of meat-and-potatoes theatre. Simple plotting, big characters, terrific speeches and a happy ending. The protagonist, J.S. Bach, receives a mysterious summons from Frederick the Great of Prussia. The long first act takes us through Bach’s professional woes and his physical infirmities. His weak vision is being treated by an
