Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
From our UK edition
There is something horrible and unnatural about seeing Theresa May in trouble. Her aloof and grandmotherly face becomes a canvas on which all kinds of dreadful emotions are drawn. It’s almost too much to watch, really, it’s like seeing Miss Marple on a shoplifting charge. She arrived early at PMQs with a gravestone pallor. It
From our UK edition
Usually it starts at McDonald’s. When protestors gather in central London they like to vandalise the burger chain’s Whitehall branch in honour of rioters who trashed the place on May Day, 2000. Today the anti-Trump crowd overlooked this historic site and converged on a nearby pub, the Silver Cross, where a handful of pro-Trump Brits
From our UK edition
The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a knockabout farce set during the Troubles. Like Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch it uses the expiry of a pet to examine human obsessiveness and self-delusion. But it takes two hours rather than three minutes to make its point. We meet a handsome terrorist, Padraic (Aidan Turner), whose adoration of
From our UK edition
The busy Speaker has made two new friends this week. He interrupted PMQs to introduce them to the house. ‘We’re very fortunate,’ he simpered, ‘to be joined in the public gallery by two members of the Osmond family. Jay and Merrill Osmond.’ The Osmonds were five luxuriantly coiffured brothers whose pop success in the 1970s
From our UK edition
Listen to the crowd. I often delay passing judgment on a show until the audience delivers its verdict. This is especially true of plays that appeal primarily to women. Genesis Inc. by Jemma Kennedy presents us with two infertile mums. Serena is a clingy worrier whose aloof boyfriend, Jeff, resents forking out thousands for IVF.
From our UK edition
The Speaker continues to use PMQs as a sort of rolling news platform where his millions of fans can catch up on all his latest activities. As a devoted Berc-oholic, I was delighted to learn this afternoon that my hero has made a new friend. Two friends in fact. He delivered the announcement early in
From our UK edition
Intriguing word, ‘octoroon’. Does it mean an eight-sided almond-flavoured cakelet? No, it’s a person whose ancestry is one eighth black. New Yorker Branden Jacobs-Jenkins wants to explore this factoid in his farce An Octoroon, which opens with an angry African-American playwright delivering a comic monologue. He tells us a story about ‘my shrink’. Then he
From our UK edition
Some of Britain’s top Berc-ologists met recently to discuss a letter sent by John Bercow to MPs nearly a decade ago. He was advertising his suitability as a successor to Speaker Martin and he promised to serve ‘no more than nine years in total,’ if he were to win the election on June 22 2009.
From our UK edition
Polly Stenham starts her overhaul of Strindberg’s Miss Julie with the title. She gives the ‘Miss’ a miss and calls it Julie. The wonder of Strindberg is that his characters speak to us with such force, knowingness and candour that they seem to belong to our own era. Modernising the setting destroys the wonder. This
From our UK edition
I blame Bercow. The Speaker has introduced a strange new custom to the Commons. He likes to point out his guests in the public gallery and to encourage MPs to join him in saluting them. Now everyone’s at it. Before today’s session Jeremy Corbyn had bagged himself an imam from a north London mosque and
From our UK edition
The National has made its largest stage available to one of the nation’s smallest talents. If Brian Friel had been born in Dorset rather than in Co. Tyrone he’d have enjoyed an unremarkable career writing episodes of The Archers with the odd stint on Emmer-dale. He’s a champion witterer whose plays lack suspense, pace, depth
From our UK edition
Jeremy Corbyn had one of his best PMQs ever. Then it all went wrong. His witty use of Boris’s recent tape-recorded solecisms went down very well in the chamber. The evening news would surely have celebrated Mr Corbyn’s deftness at the despatch box. But he was undone by the publicity-burglar, Ian Blackford. The SNP leader
From our UK edition
Tracy Letts begins his trailer-trash comedy Killer Joe with the corniest of platitudes. A runaway druggie named Chris Smith needs $6,000 to stop ‘some guys’ from killing him. He asks his dad who declares himself skint but together they plot to bump off Mrs Smith, Chris’s mum, and collect her life insurance. Interesting idea. Luckily
From our UK edition
Odd sights at PMQs today. Theresa May wore a dark blue outfit covered in an outbreak of Pollock-esque dots, as if she’d just arrived from a paintballing contest. Jeremy Corbyn looked angry, knackered and distressed. His scarlet tie was all askew and his eyes appeared shadowed and hollow. Why so fatigued? Yesterday he was in
From our UK edition
Regime change at the Globe. The new boss, Michelle Terry, wants a 50/50 ratio of males to females in each production. Rather eccentric. Why cast a drama to reflect the distribution of sexual organs across the general populace? Imagine hiring an orchestra to represent the ratio of citizens who can play an instrument. And didn’t
From our UK edition
I meet Bernard-Henri Lévy in a colossally luxurious hotel on a tree-lined avenue just behind the Elysée Palace. The French philosopher is half-reclining on a sofa, with one ankle tucked under his thigh, beneath an ornamental bookcase bearing a bust of Voltaire. He wants to discuss his new play, Last Exit Before Brexit, which will
From our UK edition
The Bridge’s big summer show is Nightfall by prize-winning newcomer Barney Norris. Widowed Jenny wants her grown-up kids, Lou and Ryan, to help her run their farm in Hampshire following their dad’s death. But Lou’s boyfriend, Pete, has been offered work abroad. That’s the only major snag in this low-wattage rustic melodrama. The back story
From our UK edition
PMQs began with a question about obesity from Labour’s Kerry McCarthy. The crisis has reached breaking-point, she said. Our chubby 11-year-olds are now even chubbier than America’s chubby 11-year-olds. ‘The voluntary approach simply won’t work,’ she said. Her colleagues, crushed and squeezed together, bore out the truth of this statement. ‘The voluntary approach,’ (or ‘turning down
From our UK edition
Describe the Night opens in Poland in 1920 where two Russian soldiers, Isaac and Nikolai, discuss truth and falsehood. Next we’re in Smolensk, 2010, where some strangers scream at each other about a hire car. Next Moscow, 1931 (or 1937 — the surtitles are illegible), where Nikolai, now a top soldier, asks Isaac, now a
From our UK edition
He’s making the most of it before he gets the push. The Speaker chaired one of the longest-ever sessions of PMQs today. It lasted nearly an hour. He opened proceedings with a ceremonial speech welcoming a handful of visitors to the chamber. They thought they’d come to watch parliament but Bercow knew better. They were