Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
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Illness forced Kim Cattrall to withdraw from Linda, the Royal Court’s new show, and Noma Dumezweni scooped up the debris at the last minute. And what debris. All thoughts of kittenish Cattrall evaporated as Dumezweni strode on to the stage, a luscious blend of high-performance hair and trouser-suited luminosity. Linda is in her prime, at
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Corbyn was back on drone duty at PMQs. He monotoned his way through six questions about NHS funding and gave the impression that a winter crisis would really make his Christmas. Ed Miliband had the same habit of suggesting that only mass-death could save him. Semi-comatose Corbs remained on ‘stand-by mode’ throughout. He didn’t react
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It’s the target that makes the satire as well as the satirist. Is the subject powerful, active, relevant and menacing? Patrick Barlow’s new spoof, Ben Hur, must answer ‘No’ on all four counts. The show takes aim at two principal irritants: vain actors and the Hollywood epics of the 1950s, whose titanic scale was offered
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Jeremy Corbyn is like the lights in a planetarium. Whenever he goes off, stars appear. Last week the radiation came from Hilary Benn. At PMQs today it was Angela Eagle who outshone her leader. With Cameron away, George Osborne manned the despatch box but he showed not a flicker of joy or anticipation as he
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Jamie Lloyd’s production of Pinter’s The Homecoming is a pile of terrific and silly ideas. Mostly terrific. The action takes place on a raised, thrusting stage surrounded by a steel canopy of scarlet rods like a boxing-ring. Ideal for a play about damaged men competing for a female trophy. Soutra Gilmour’s design is a model
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Bomb Syria. That was Cameron’s priority today as PMQs was sidelined in favour of the debate on airstrikes. His opponents’ strategy was ‘Bomb Cameron.’ They demanded a withdrawal of his remark that any opponent of bombing must be a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. The snarliest words came from Alex Salmond whose grey jowls jiggled with rage as
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Wallace Shawn is a lovely old sausage. A stalwart of American theatre, he’s taken cameo roles in classic movies like Clueless and Manhattan. He’s also a playwright whose new script has received its world première at the National Theatre. Lucky chap. He spent three or four years writing Evening at the Talk House and it
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That was a funny way to say sorry. Osborne kicked off his autumn statement with a Niagara of self-congratulation. He does the same thing at the budget. He said his wisdom, foresight and courage had rescued the nation from bankruptcy and set us on a golden path towards wealth, security and happiness. His glorious achievements
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Kenneth Branagh opens his West End tenancy with Shakespeare’s inexplicably popular The Winter’s Tale. We start in Sicily where Leontes and his queen Hermione are entertaining Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. The design is heavily Germanic. Crimson drapes shroud the grey marble columns. A massive fir tree, twinkling with candlelight, is rooted in an ornamental
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Jezza started PMQs with a bit of a wobble. As he got to his feet the applause from his Labour ‘friends’ sounded like the hoarse whooshings of a punctured beach ball. Corbyn nervously offered his sympathy to the Paris terror victims and expressed concern that the slaughter of 129 innocents might increase Islamophobia in Britain.
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One of the challenges of art is to know the difference between innovation and error. I wonder sometimes if the Royal Court realises such a confusion can arise. Its new production, RoosevElvis, has been hailed as a thesaurus of fascinating novelties but to me it looks like a classic case of ineptitude posing as originality.
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What is Glyndebourne? A middle-aged Bullingdon. That’s a common view: a luxury bun fight for past-it toffs who glug champagne, wolf down salmon rolls and pass out decorously on the lawn. But the reality is that it caters to those of my class (lower-middle) who want to boost their pedigree with an eye-catching essay in
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‘It’s getting longer and longer,’ grumped David Cameron at PMQs. A microphone picked up the aside as the session over-ran by 10 minutes. Why the delay? First, the Speaker. He’s keen to give as many backbenchers as possible a chance to pass unrecognised on national TV. Secondly, he adores the limelight himself. At the slightest
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Here are three truths about play-writing. A script without an interval will be structurally flawed. A vague, whimsical title means a vague, whimsical drama. And a play about Alzheimer’s will self-destruct for the obvious reason that drama is an examination of character while Alzheimer’s is an effacement of character, so the paint evaporates before it
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The RSC’s The Wars of the Roses solves a peculiar literary problem. Shakespeare’s earliest history plays are entitled Henry VI parts (I), (II) and (III), which is thought to put people off. If you see one why not see all? If you miss the opener will the sequels confuse you? The solution is to condense
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Tom Watson, the man who hated Brittan, appeared before the Home Affairs committee this afternoon. In earlier evidence it became clear that the Met was divided on the rape allegations against the late Lord Brittan. Detective Chief Inspector Settle said that to subject him to an interview under caution would have constituted ‘a baseless witch-hunt’.
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The Father, set in a swish Paris apartment, has a beautifully spare and elegant set. The stage is framed by a slender rectangle of dazzling white dots which impart an air of incalculable and almost intimidating opulence to the show. I felt I was lucky to be there. Here’s the plot. Kenneth Cranham plays a
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Corbyn’s PMQ’s strategy is now clear. Hopeful emailers send their lifestyle details to Labour HQ and a computer sifts the figures to find the voter likeliest to cause the prime minister’s cheeks to blush purple with shame. Today’s lucky winner was Kelly, (no surname given), a single mum on £7.20 per hour who works for
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Philippe V was a Bourbon prince who secured the throne of Spain using his family connections. Claire van Kampen is a writer who relied on the same method to secure a West End opening for her play about Philippe. It stars Mark van Kampen (aka Mark Rylance) as the charmingly dotty Frenchman. Philippe was a
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This was Cameron’s ‘greatest’ speech ever if you count his uses of the g-word. Great Britain, great schools, great traditions, a great Conservative party, the greatest team a prime minister could have. Greater days. Greater Britain. Stepping stones to greatness. He mentioned the election with a gooey tinge of Gift Card Dave. ‘As dawn rose, a
