Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Covid marshals have invaded theatreland. Arriving for a weekday matinee at the Bridge, I was greeted by stewards holding up illuminated boards. ‘PLEASE WEAR A FACE COVERING.’ Inside, the seating had been rearranged into clumps of twos and threes with the odd single perch sticking out like a toadstool. Nicholas Hytner offered us a pair
Sir Keir Starmer did a Greta at PMQs today. Without their leader, Labour invited Angela Rayner to duff up Boris in public. On her feet she announced that this would be ‘the Battle of Britain’. And she believed that ‘the whole country’ would be watching. It was more like a game of hop-scotch between two flirtatious teenagers. The air
Was the Oxford vaccine trial paused? Mine wasn’t. I signed up for it last week, in the 55 to 69-year-old category, and I was told on Friday that I should continue posting my swabs and attending follow-up appointments. My friends were keen to tell me I was ‘utterly mad’ to join a trial. But I
It has roughly the same proportions as Shakespeare’s Globe. The Roman Theatre in Verulamium (St Albans) is an atmospheric ruin with low flint walls, a banked rampart and a single stone column. Historians estimate that the circular space, measuring about 40 yards in diameter, would have enabled 7,000 spectators to watch plays, gladiatorial contests and
After last week’s shambles, Boris could barely have performed worse at PMQs today. Sir Keir Starmer began with a horror-story endured by two parents in London. They needed an urgent Covid test for a feverish toddler but were told that nothing was available in the capital. Go to Romford, was the advice. Then they were
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On this week’s podcast, Lloyd Evans argues that the state should stop subsidising the National Theatre and start funding bingo halls (00:41). Then Lionel Shriver explains the trouble of taking back control (08:15). And finally, Will Heaven explores the dissolution of the Downside monastery (16:48).
For nearly six months our subsidised playhouses, notably the National Theatre, have been dark. What have we missed? Not much. Some would say nothing at all. And this has come as a surprise to those of us who were led to believe that the subsidised theatre is critical to ‘the national conversation’. It turns out
It was woeful. It was ugly to behold. It was beyond gruesome. Even Boris’s most faithful supporters had to watch PMQs from behind the sofa. Sir Keir Starmer, who turns 58 today, got a fabulous birthday present – a stunningly inept performance from the Prime Minister. Sir Keir demanded a ‘straight answer to a straight
There was plastic aplenty at today’s Extinction Rebellion rally in Parliament Square. Plastic shoes, plastic badges, plastic sunglasses, plastic phone covers. A woman offered me a sticker peeled from a strip. ‘Are they plastic?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Someone gave them to me.’ XR is starting a week of demos and civil disobedience. I arrived just as
The rise of the political satirist Nish Kumar baffles many. If you Google ‘Nish Kumar quotes’ you find a list of the ten witticisms most widely shared by his fans. ‘My parents wanted me to be a lawyer.’ ‘I have a strange nose: it’s big and weird.’ ‘When I am on stage I am often
The virus has broken Edinburgh. The shattered remnants of the festival are visible on the internet. Here’s what happened. The international festival has been reduced to one filmed theatre commission and a handful of videoed musical offerings. The Fringe has survived but in a horribly mutilated form. Two of its most prestigious brands, the Pleasance
LBC broadcaster Iain Dale has moved his Edinburgh Festival ‘All Talk’ series to Zoom, and yesterday he spoke to Alastair Campbell – the two clashed from the start. The former spin-doctor was seated in a strange, beige-tinted room which looked like a sauna. Dale asked where Campbell was, doubtless knowing that he likes to spend
LBC broadcaster Iain Dale has transformed his Edinburgh festival shows into a series of Zoom-casts. First up, David Davis. The former Brexit secretary had arranged his web-cam in a study lined with scarlet law-books. A few hours earlier, he said, he’d completed a seven-mile jog. He’s 71. Davis began by criticising the government over the corona-shambles.
So the madness continues. Planes full of passengers are going everywhere. Theatres full of ghosts are going bust. My first press night since March took place at a monumental Victorian building in Wandsworth where concerts are staged in an open-air courtyard. The entry process was less fussy than I’d expected. I didn’t need my phone
Back to the West End at last. After a four- month lay-off, I grabbed the first available chance to catch a show in central London. I joined 20 enthusiasts at the ‘West End Musical — Silent Disco Walking Tour’, which convened outside a Fitzrovia pub. We were given a pink bracelet and a set of
‘Give us a date, mate!’ That was the sound of Andrew Lloyd Webber begging Boris Johnson to announce when the West End can return to normal. He made his plea at the London Palladium on 23 July, where he was testing a new set of Covid-compliant measures during a one-hour solo show by Beverley Knight.
The BBC announces Merchant of Venice as if it were a Hollywood blockbuster. ‘In the melting pot of Venice, trade is God.’ The RSC, which staged the show in 2015, calls it ‘a thrilling, contemporary interpretation’. Each element in Polly Findlay’s production looks fine. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and Patsy Ferran (Bassanio and Portia) are as cute
There was an urgent question about jobs at PMQs today. One job in particular. The questioner, Maria Miller, was concerned that she hadn’t yet been hired to head a government department. She made her bid for promotion by strewing petals and scented bouquets at Boris’s feet. She reminded us that on Friday, 24 July, the
There’s talk of reparations in the air. Lobbyists from around the world are demanding sin-payments from former colonial powers. Let me add my voice to the clamour on behalf of this island’s indigenous Celtic people. My family are from Llanelli in Carmarthenshire and I believe that my compatriots have an excellent case to make against
Let’s face it. Theatre via the internet is barely theatre. It takes a huge amount of creativity and inventiveness to make anything remotely like a theatrical drama in the digital sphere. The BBC’s Culture in Quarantine team have invited some talented writers and actors to try and crack it. Unprecedented begins with ‘Viral’, by James
