Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
From our UK edition
Small boats could be the issue that swings the next election. Photographs of new arrivals being shuttled from beaches to free hotels is a potent symbol of a government in chaos. A country and its borders are the same thing. If the borders cease to exist, so does the country. Voters grasp this instinctively but
From our UK edition
Rupert Goold’s new show, Women, Beware the Devil, has great costumes, sumptuous sets and an intriguing chessboard stage like a Vermeer painting. Impressive to look at but that’s where the good news ends. Dramatist Lulu Raczka should have thought twice before writing a script about witchcraft, which was bound to invite comparisons with The Crucible,
From our UK edition
A bad day for daffodils. Hundreds of these little golden trombones were cut down this morning so that our MPs could display their bogus affection for Wales. Honestly, sporting a daff on St David’s Day is like clapping for the NHS – a badge of insincerity. The issue of the moment, the Windsor Framework, barely
From our UK edition
Winner’s Curse is a hybrid drama by Dan Patterson and Daniel Taub which opens as a lecture by a fictional diplomat, Hugo Leitski (a dinner-jacketed Clive Anderson). Leitski offers to teach us the subtle art of negotiation. An expert diplomat, he explains, must convince each side that they’re the winners in the negotiation and that
From our UK edition
‘Who wrote it?’ asks the Times, of Dom: The Play. I’ll let you in on a secret: it was me. If you’re selling a product, you need to advertise what you’re flogging, rather than its creator. That’s why, when my satire about Dominic Cummings launched at The Other Palace in Victoria this week, I withheld
From our UK edition
Small boats are becoming a big problem for Rishi. Four Tory backbenchers raised the issue at PMQs. Andrew Selous asked about a ‘much-loved’ hotel in his constituency which the Home Office has annexed on behalf of their beloved migrants. Weddings and family parties have been cancelled. Selous, rather ludicrously, asked the PM to ‘redouble his
From our UK edition
Standing at the Sky’s Edge is an ode to a monstrous carbuncle. The atrocity in question is a concrete gulag, Park Hill, built by Sheffield council in the 1960s as a punishment for hard-up locals who couldn’t afford to buy a house. The show is a propaganda effort on behalf of bossy, big-state, high-tax Labour
From our UK edition
Simon Stone claims that his new comedy, Phaedra, draws on the work of Euripides, Seneca and Racine. In fact, the porn-mag narrative resembles a passage in Alan Clark’s diaries where the priapic scribbler seduces a mother and daughter in rapid succession. That’s what happens to Sofiane, a homeless Moroccan lecher, aged 41, who has the
From our UK edition
PMQs looked like a comedy routine. But there was nothing funny about it. President Zelensky, AKA Uncle Volod, has come to town to address a joint session of both houses. As a warm-up act, MPs behaved like a gang of armchair Rambos and competed to fawn over Uncle Volod while pledging taxpayers’ cash to the
From our UK edition
A romcom with an irritating title, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, has opened at the HP Theatre starring Jenna Coleman and Aidan Turner. Telly addicts will recognise their names. They play two London yuppies, Oliver and Bernadette, who are struggling to communicate properly. Out of nowhere, the state imposes a gruesome new ‘Hush Law’ that
From our UK edition
Gold wallpaper? All gone. That was the first big revelation of Piers Morgan’s interview with Rishi Sunak to mark the PM’s 100th day in No. 10. Every trace of Boris’s trailer-trash décor has been replaced with squeaky-clean white visuals. Piers and Rishi went head-to-head in a characterless kitchen-diner that looked like the show-home of a new-build
From our UK edition
Necromancy was the main theme at PMQs. The Labour party has realised that Nadhim Zahawi’s resignation has left a gaping hole in their ‘sleazy Tories’ strategy. They badly need him back on stage. Sir Keir Starmer addressed Rishi’s fanciful claim that the rumours about Zahawi’s tax affairs were unknown to him until recent weeks. Sir
From our UK edition
Sound of the Underground is a drag show involving a handful of cross-dressers who spend the opening 15 minutes telling us who they are. Then, rather ominously, they announce: ‘We’ve written a play.’ But they haven’t really. The scene shifts to a kitchen where the drag queens meet to discuss their pay and conditions, and
From our UK edition
God. What a grisly PMQs. Last week, Sir Keir Starmer politicised the case of an NHS patient who died before an ambulance could save her. Today he tried to make a political point about a murder. ‘It’s hard to convey the agony they’ve been through,’ he said of a meeting with the victim’s family, ‘They
From our UK edition
The Unfriend is a smart new family comedy which opens on the sunlit deck of a cruise ship. Peter and Debbie, a boring middle-class couple, are introduced to a clingy American tourist, Elsa, who worms her way into their affections. Before they know it, they’ve agreed to let her visit them at home after the
From our UK edition
Gruesome rhetoric at PMQs. The horror began with Sir Keir Starmer revealing that he can tell the time. ‘It’s three minutes past twelve,’ he announced. Rowdy Tories immediately demanded to know how soon he’d alter that statement. Sir Keir postulated a medical emergency, a patient suffering from ‘chest pains and fearing a heart attack,’ hoping
From our UK edition
Watch on the Rhine is the curiously misleading title chosen by Lillian Hellman for a wartime family drama that became a film starring Bette Davis. The location is not Europe but America and the show opens with Fanny Farrelly, a member of the New England gentry, arriving in her sumptuous drawing room for breakfast. The
From our UK edition
New year, new Labour. Sir Keir deployed his latest strategy at PMQS, contrasting the Tory-run NHS with the glorious record of the Labour administration. When his party were in power, he argued, the NHS was such a triumph that hardly anyone used it. There was no need. Doctors’ appointments were available within days. Cancer referrals
From our UK edition
The National’s new comedy by April De Angelis is a clever and amusing attempt to deliver that most elusive artefact, the state-of-the-nation play. It’s easy to pan this production because the plot lacks surprises and the script is overly indebted to Abigail’s Party. The two lead characters are formulaic creations who reflect political polarities: left
From our UK edition
Bombs away! Prince Harry’s mission to dump ordnance on his nearest and dearest continued last night in a riveting interview with Tom Bradby of ITV. Their explosive tete-a-tete began well for the royal escapologist who described the heart-breaking scene on 31 August, 1997, when Charles (whom he calls ‘Pa’) woke him at Balmoral. ‘Darling boy,
