Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Mrs Doubtfire is a social comedy about divorce. We meet Miranda, a talentless, bitter mother, who tires of her caring but imperfect husband, Daniel, and kicks him out of the house on some footling pretext. When Miranda later discovers that Daniel’s loyalty to their children is an asset of inestimable value she invites him back.
London is killing us. That’s the conclusion of Sadiq Khan’s alarming new book, Breathe: Tackling the Climate Emergency, which he publicised last night at a 90-minute event held in the Royal Festival Hall. The sales pitch for Khan’s book was disturbed by hecklers and protestors who blew whistles and shouted constant abuse at the mayor.
Strange tactics by Sir Keir at PMQs. He raised the issue of broken promises on immigration, which gave Rishi Sunak a chance to sound tougher than Labour. ‘How many work visas were issued to foreign nationals last year?’ asked Sir Keir. Rishi dodged the question and blamed the unexpectedly large influx on the Ukraine war.
Brokeback Mountain, a play with music, opens in a scruffy bedroom where a snowy-haired tramp finds a lumberjack’s shirt and places it over his nose. Then he inhales. Who is this elderly vagrant? And why is he absorbing the scent of an abandoned garment? Two hours later, at the play’s close, we finally learn that
The party leaders were absent today so the understudies stepped in. Angela Rayner filled the vacuum that is Sir Keir Starmer, while Oliver Dowden performed for Rishi Sunak. Rayner had prepared for the encounter by spending the entire morning in hair and make-up. Result, a sharp off-white jacket and matching slacks. And her famous ginger
A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a timid desperado named Nick. Both accept that Rachel must make all the important decisions in their lives and she orders Nick to submit to ‘pegging’. After some perfunctory resistance, Nick obeys. ‘Lube me up,’ he
Sir Keir’s gag-writers were on good form at PMQs. Last week, the Tories lowered expectations by predicting a loss of 1,000 seats at the local election. And this worst-case scenario came true. ‘At last,’ crowed Sir Keir, ‘a Tory promise they haven’t actually broken.’ He also took aim at Rishi’s democratic illegitimacy. In last year’s
The Motive and the Cue breaches the inviolable sanctity of the rehearsal room. The play, set in New York in 1964, follows John Gielgud’s efforts to direct the world’s biggest film star, Richard Burton, in Shakespeare’s most demanding play, Hamlet. A member of Gielgud’s company, Richard L. Sterne, recorded the process and his notes form
Powerful stuff from Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. He tackled Rishi Sunak on his favourite battleground – statistics. He began by pinning the PM down on a very specific question. How many mortgage-holders have to pay more each month because the Tories ‘crashed the economy last autumn’? Rishi didn’t know. Sir Keir gave him the
Deborah Bruce’s new play Dixon and Daughters is a family drama that opens on a note of sour mistrust. We’re in a working-class home in Yorkshire where a vituperative old crosspatch, Mary, has just returned from prison. Rather than accepting her daughters’ friendly welcome she treats them all with open hostility. Had Ibsen been in
Grievance fever gripped the house at Prime Minister’s Questions. The grudge-mongers were out in force. Sir Keir Starmer led the charge and asked Rishi Sunak why he refused to scrap non-dom status. The Labour leader answered his own question by explaining that the tax exemption enriches Rishi’s ‘family’. (By ‘family’ he meant ‘wife’, of course, and
Snowflakes, an excellent title, rehashes The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter. A guest in a hotel room is visited by two intruders posing as staff. The intruders are hired assassins who accuse the guest of committing a half-explained hate crime on social media. His punishment, execution, will be livestreamed as a warning to other hate
‘Sir Softie.’ That’s Rishi’s new nickname for Sir Keir Starmer. ‘Sir Softie,’ he called out twice at PMQs. ‘He’s soft on crime!’ The insult works because it’s easy to remember and pleasantly alliterative. And it builds on an existing perception of Sir Keir as a criminal-hugging lawyer. Sir Keir set out to overturn that impression
War has broken out in theatreland. Managements are increasingly at odds with the audiences who fund their livelihoods. A recent stand-off involved James Norton’s new show, A Little Life, which contains a couple of scenes in which the actor removes his clothes. A punter at a preview in Richmond secretly photographed the moments of nudity
The Secret Life of Bees is a fairy-tale set in the Deep South in 1964. Lily, a bullied white girl, befriends a plucky black maid, Rosaleen, and they escape together from Lily’s tyrannical dad. After various adventures they take sanctuary at a honey farm run by a commune of astonishingly successful African-American businesswomen. This story
A Little Life, based on Hanya Yanagihara’s novel, is set in a New York apartment shared by four mega-successful yuppies: an architect, a fine artist, a film star and a Wall Street attorney, Jude, played by James Norton. A friendly doctor tags along occasionally and an older lawyer, in his sixties, joins the gang after
Berlusconi: A New Musical, an excellent title, has opened at a new venue in south London, Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The show begins with the former Italian prime minister preening triumphantly on a white marble set that resembles the Capitol in Rome where Caesar was murdered by rivals who’d grown sick of his power lust. Berlusconi
Rishi Sunak missed PMQs to attend Betty Boothroyd’s funeral and a half-empty chamber watched the deputies, Dominic Raab and Angela Rayner, slug it out. Rayner, always a crowd-pleaser, began by hailing the late Paul O’Grady as ‘a true northern star.’ And she had fun with the new crackdown on street thuggery or ‘anti-social behaviour’ as
Accidental Death of an Anarchist has been performed all over the world with varying degrees of success. Written by Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame, the script was inspired by an actual case of police brutality in 1969 when a train driver with anarchist leanings was found dead beneath the open window of a
PMQs drove up a cul-de-sac today. Sir Keir’s team of researchers have discovered a crime blackspot where ten houses have been burgled in the last 18 months, but only one of these offences has ended up in court. This delighted Sir Keir as it gave him a chance to remind the world that he once
