Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Kenneth Branagh’s obsession with Larry Olivier’s career is becoming such a bizarre act of theatrical necromancy that it deserves to be turned into a drama. Sir Ken and Lord Olivier could be played by the same actor. The Entertainer, written for Larry in 1956 by John Osborne, presents us with a washed-up music-hall star, Archie
Bit early for a lap of honour. At PMQs Mrs May congratulated her government (i.e. herself) on fifty marvellous days in government. And she drew comparisons between her polished style and the Corbyn car-wreck. One view is that the chimpanzees’ tea-party currently posing as Her Majesty’s opposition should remain beneath the attention of Number 10.
In the 1980s, supermarkets stocked a fruit juice named ‘Um Bongo’ with the strapline ‘They drink it in the Congo!’. This is the starting point for Adam Brace’s examination of Britain’s relationship with the Congolese (whose word ‘mbongo’ means money). A group of do-gooding Londoners host a festival to celebrate the Congo’s culture and history
‘European premiere of classic American musical’ is a phrase that deeply alarms the experienced playgoer. As I tootled along to Southwark Playhouse I asked myself why this Rodgers and Hammerstein masterpiece had taken so long to plough its way across the ocean. In 1947 the Broadway prodigies decided to follow up their first two hits,
‘Many people are mourning,’ said Sam West on a BBC panel show discussing the response of the arts world to Brexit. According to West’s figures, ‘96 per cent of those polled were for Remain. Collaboration and connection are our bread and butter.’ The atmosphere of bitterness and anger was palpable at the Edinburgh Festival. I
Dominic Frisby is an actor best known for voicing the booking.com adverts (‘Booking dot com, booking dot yeah’). Voiceover specialists can earn large fees for a morning’s work and they have endless time in which to ponder where their money ends up. Frisby is irked by the UK tax regime, whose code-book is four times
As the festival grows, the good acts are harder to find and the prices keep rising to meet the throngs of showbiz refugees who surge north in the belief that the glory, this year, will be theirs. Arriving at my one-star hovel (no breakfast, no towels, shared bathroom), I was given a security key and
Consider it commercially. So powerful is the pull of the Potter franchise that the characters could simply re-enact the plot of ‘Incy-Wincy Spider’ and the fans would swoon with joy. The stage show has been written by a two-man committee, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, with the help of billionaire equality campaigner J.K. Rowling. Harry
An inspired decision to stage Jesus Christ Superstar in a summer theatre in Regent’s Park. The action takes place outdoors, in balmy climes, so the atmosphere is ideal for Rice and Lloyd Webber’s finest show. The songbook bursts with melodic inventiveness, and the score blithely rips apart the conventions of musical theatre and remakes them
Fracking is a British tradition. Since 1969 more than 200 sites have used hydraulic fracturing ‘without environmental catastrophes’ according to Dick Selley, an emeritus professor of geology, writing in the programme notes to Fracked! by Alistair Beaton. The satire takes the opposite view and regards fracking as a wicked novelty inflicted on rustic innocents by
What we know for sure about our secretive new PM is that she uses her clothes as a bush-telegraph. What did the tom-toms tell us? Mrs May was done up like an Evesham house-wife going to dinner with her husband’s boss in about 1950. Neat hair. Navy blue jacket. White top underneath. A rope of
Anthony Neilson is an Arts Council favourite known for trivial but impenetrable plays with off-putting names like The Wonderful World of Dissocia. His latest effort has another hazard-warning instead of a title. Unreachable starts with an actress auditioning for a dystopian sci-fi movie set in a clichéd future. She lands the role and we cut
Nice send off for Cameron at PMQs. Both leaders acquitted themselves well. Cameron was wry, witty and self-deprecating. He claimed to have ‘addressed’ a total of 5500 questions during his premiership. ‘How many I’ve answered I’ll leave to others.’ Corbs got it spot on too and showed us a relaxed, funny, generous side. He asked
Does anyone believe Brian Friel’s libellous blarney? He portrays Ireland in the 20th century as an economic basket case where the starving, the retarded, the crippled and the widowed offer up prayers to a heartless God who responds by heaping their burden ever higher. Friel is popular with British mainlanders who are tickled by the
The Labour party’s in-growing toenail, Jeremy Corbyn, (not to be removed without much screaming and blood), behaved like a man on a zero-hours contract today. He skedaddled through his six questions as if dashing away to another gig at 12.30. But doing what? Perhaps auctioning off the ‘Remain’ badges he bought in June at ‘lastminute.com’.
Mike Bartlett’s curious blank-verse drama Charles III became an international hit. His new effort examines the cut-throat world of dark-web espionage. An American traitor named Andrew (Edward Snowden presumably) is hiding out in a Moscow hotel. Enter a flirty, giggling Irishwoman played by Caoilfhionn Dunne, who claims to be British and who teases Andrew over
Rare to see a plank-walker at the helm of the ship. Today there were two. Cameron has accepted the inevitable and his demeanour at the despatch box was relaxed, amused, peaceable. Buoyant at times. Even foes like Bernard Jenkin exchanged warm words with him. And he handled Corbyn with extreme mildness until a rush of blood
When Richard III’s bones were unearthed in a Leicester car park, Frankie Boyle suggested the headline ‘Bent royal found at dogging hotspot’. Rupert Goold opens his version of the play by restaging the 2012 excavation as if to inform us that the past and the future are held together by something called time. That glib
Gauche, perhaps, to complain about Aladdin but it slightly deserves it. The terrific Genie opens the show and then disappears for 45 minutes while the plot is explained. My squirmy ten-year-old kept whispering Aladdin-related trivia at me in order to occupy himself as the rags-to-riches storyline was laid out in far too much detail. Visually
What a strange farewell. The slickest, sparkiest and most brutal street-fighter the Tory party has produced in a generation found himself agreeing with his worst enemies today. ‘That says something,’ shouted David Cameron (who remains prime minister for the next week or so). ‘We have huge disagreements,’ he explained. And yet despite the fault-lines his
