Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic

PMQs: May unveils her Brexit consolation prizes

Amber Rudd, a washed-up ex-minister last week, is the de facto Brexit secretary today. She revealed her loyalties this morning when she told an interviewer that parliament wouldn’t approve a no-deal agreement. And with no deal off the table, Brussels can dictate terms. Congrats Amber. The Légion d’honneur is on its way. And a peerage

This will end badly | 15 November 2018

Pinter Three appeals to opposite poles of the play-going spectrum. The birdbrains like me will enjoy the music-hall sketches while the goatee-strokers will have fun pretending that Pinter’s deadly earnest memory plays are worth seeing. Watching the first piece, Landscape, is like receiving a jigsaw puzzle in instalments. Two characters, Duff and Beth, speak to

Corbyn exposed the flaw in May’s Brexit plan at PMQs

Today’s choice for ‘A Book At Bedtime’ is the government’s draft Brexit deal. At daybreak the masterpiece was being referred to as a 500-page tome but its estimated length has now risen to 540 pp. That explains why the PM looked so calm and unruffled and at PMQs. No MP is going to risk brain

Teenage kicks | 8 November 2018

Lauren Gunderson’s play I and You opens in the scruffy bedroom of 17-year-old Caroline. Lonely, beautiful and furious, she’s unable to participate in school life owing to a chronic liver problem. Into her hideaway barges Anthony, a handsome geek, who wants her to help with a Walt Whitman project. Caroline tries to chase him off

A Bridge too far

In the year since it opened, the Bridge has given us the following: a harmless Karl Marx comedy by Richard Bean; a modern-dress Julius Caesar with Ben Whishaw playing Brutus as a frowning existentialist; a dreary rustic soap opera written by newcomer Barney Norris; and an enjoyable NHS romp by Alan Bennett. Not quite the

May and Corbyn’s austerity tug-of-war at PMQs

The leaders played austerity tug-of-war at PMQs today. Is it over yet? Yes it is, said Theresa May. Not for years, said Jeremy Corbyn. Back and forth they went. Eventually they’d swung around 180 degrees and swapped positions. Corbyn seemed to want more austerity. May seemed thrilled that it was finished – a policy that

What I learned at the People’s Vote march

Two beliefs obsess the Remain cause. First, that voters were lied to during the referendum campaign. (Questionable). Second, that the negotiations are being botched. (Indisputable). But while Remainers believe that their opponents are fibbers, they can’t see that they too are being misled. At the People’s Vote rally last Saturday, I found general acceptance of

Lloyd Evans

Baby love | 25 October 2018

Stories by Nina Raine is a bun-in-the-oven comedy with a complex back narrative. Anna, in her mid-thirties, had a boyfriend 12 years younger than her but the relationship died just as Anna was ready to sprog. Aged 38, and desperately broody, she needs to get preggers pronto. We join her on a Sperm Quest. Though

Theresa May survives another day at PMQs

Mrs May survives. That’s the sensational news from today’s PMQs which was conducted in a remarkably sedate and leisurely atmosphere. The Tory leader came under little pressure from Jeremy Corbyn. And she got no grief at all from her own back-stabbers, sorry, back-benchers who seem to have decided to delay her dethronement until Hallowe’en, or

What I learned at the People’s Vote march | 22 October 2018

Two beliefs obsess the Remain cause. First, that voters were lied to during the referendum campaign. (Questionable). Second, that the negotiations are being botched. (Indisputable). But while Remainers believe that their opponents are fibbers, they can’t see that they too are being misled. At the People’s Vote rally last Saturday, I found general acceptance of

This is a man’s world

Sir David Hare’s weird new play sets out to chronicle the history of the Labour movement from 1996 to the present day. But it makes no mention of Corbyn, Momentum, the anti-Semitism row or rumours of a breakaway party. The drama is located in the dead-safe Miliband era and it opens with talk of a

John Bercow finally delivered a Speaker’s masterclass at PMQs

A strange PMQs. Usually the session is dominated by honking throats and empurpled faces. Today there were interesting facts and useful opinions. Amazing! An expertly briefed Jeremy Corbyn put Theresa May on the spot by noting that she’d omitted to say ‘Chequers’ in her conference speech or during recent performances in parliament. So is it dead? No,

Second thoughts | 11 October 2018

Pinter Two, the second leg of the Pinter season, offers us a pair of one-act comedies. The Lover is a surreal pastiche of married life. A suburban housewife has a paramour who visits her daily while her husband is at work. The husband knows of his rival and discusses his wife’s infidelity as if it

Theresa May reveals her plan to bring Chequers back from the dead

Golden sunshine streamed across Westminster at noon. And Jeremy Corbyn wiped away the cheer as soon as he stood up at PMQs. Performing his sad-sack routine, he grouched his way through six questions about ‘painful austerity’. Theresa May wants Scrooge replaced by Lady Bountiful in the corridors of Whitehall. But it hasn’t happened, grumbled the

God and monsters

The drop-curtain resembles a granite slab on which the genius’s name has been carved for all time. The festival of Pinter at the Harold Pinter Theatre feels like the inauguration of a godhead. And it’s not easy to separate the work from the reverence that surrounds it. Pinter One consists of sketches and playlets written

It gets my vote

Sylvia, the Old Vic’s musical about the Pankhurst clan, has had a troubled nativity. Illness struck the cast during rehearsals. Press night was postponed by a week. On the evening of the delayed performance, the show was cancelled just before curtain-up. We were told that a ‘concert version’ would be presented with understudies filling certain

Public enemy

Arinzé Kene’s play Misty is a collection of rap numbers and skits about a fare dodger, Lucas, from Hackney. Lucas (played by Kene) gets into a scuffle on a bus and is later arrested for entering London Zoo without a ticket. That’s the entire narrative. Obviously, Kene can’t create an evening’s entertainment from such meagre

Always look on the dark side of life

Hampstead’s boss Ed Hall was so impressed by Stephen Karam’s play The Humans that he wanted to direct it himself. Instead, thanks to a stunning series of accidents, he was able to bring the original Tony award-winning production from Broadway to London. And here it is, directed by Joe Mantello. It’s a family drama, which

Armed with partisan missives, May outgunned Corbyn at PMQs

Poor Jezza. The Labour leader had a decent showing today but he was outgunned by Mrs May who performed with astonishing prickliness and aggression. Mr Corbyn claimed that Universal Credit has forced millions onto the bread-line. The PM countered that reform was vital. She cited a young mum in Maidenhead who’d been advised to skive,

Less is Moor

It’s intelligent, enjoyable, beautiful to look at and funny in unexpected places, yet Othello at the Globe didn’t quite meet my sky-high expectations. The star should be the Moor but André Holland, from Alabama, can’t rival the magnetism of Mark Rylance (Iago). Holland’s diction is a strain for British ears. We’re used to hearing consonants