Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Athol Fugard is regarded as a theatrical titan but I usually need a microscope to find any trace of greatness in his work. The Island is set in a South African prison camp in the 1960s. Two banged-up lags, John and Winston, are toiling in the noonday heat. The governor torments them with a Kafka-esque
It started as soon as Ed Miliband stood up at PMQs today. ‘Nightmare!’ yelled the Tories. ‘Nightmare!’ They’d been fired up by the first question from Steve Brine, who craftily double-loaded his query. He referenced the Co-op bank and the ‘nightmare email’ in one sentence. Would the PM respond, he asked, ‘to grave concerns about
It’s an unlovely venue, for sure. Charing Cross Theatre, underneath the arches, likes to welcome vagrant plays that can’t find a home elsewhere. The dripping exterior, opposite a gay love-hub named Heaven, feels as if it’s paved with tears. The foyer is scented with mildewed chip fat and the ink-black auditorium looks like a closed-down
The nation was agog today as Britain’s spymasters were summoned to parliament. The heads of MI5 and MI6, along with the boss of GCHQ, were grilled about the ethics and practice of counter-terrorism. It was a 2 pm kick-off but the session got underway at 2.02 pm in real time. A tag on the TV
Here’s a tip for play-goers. When the curtain goes up on a garden, prepare for some feeble plotting. The glory of gardens, for the playwright, is that the characters can enter and leave without reason. The rites of welcome and valediction, the physical opening and shutting of doors, the declaration of motive are all abandoned.
Nope. Nothing doing. Ed Miliband spent all morning racking his brains but he couldn’t think of a single disaster to pin on David Cameron at PMQs. So he made one up. A crisis, he declared sonorously, is about engulf the NHS this winter. Our A&E departments will soon be overwhelmed by flu-victims expiring on trolleys
This is a strange one. Simon Paisley Day’s new play feels like a conventional comedy of manners. Three couples pitch up at a Welsh cottage for a relaxing weekend away from the kiddies. Trouble erupts instantly. Keith and Briony bicker over the milk that the swollen-breasted Briony has to express into plastic bottles. Keith secretly
It was a doddle for Ed Miliband at PMQs this afternoon. The nation watched agog yesterday as the energy companies deployed a handful of silk-lined suits to justify their price hikes to a parliamentary committee. Miliband arrived at the house knowing that victory was simple. He just had to fuse the Tories and Big Energy
It’s all true about Zoë Wanamaker. She’s like a wood-nymph from the Tolkien franchise. Pixie features, nut-brown eyes, a mischievous tight-lipped smile and a warm cackling laugh. Next week she makes a guest appearance at the Hampstead Arts Festival to discuss her acting career. Had she heeded the advice of her parents — Sam Wanamaker
There are many pleasures in The Light Princess, a new musical by Tori Amos. George MacDonald’s fairy story introduces us to a beautiful red-haired royal, Althea (Rosalie Craig), who has a mysterious resistance to gravity. After various tribulations she abandons life on dry land and becomes a mermaid. The show meets these technical challenges with
At PMQs today, the Tories’s energy policy went bi-polar. The Conservatives now seem to touch both extremes of the debate. For eight years they’ve presented themselves as a gang of happy tree-huggers who applaud every green subsidy going. But today David Cameron announced his plan to ‘roll back some of the green regulations and charges’.
Bang! The race is on. James Graham is the celebrated author of This House, a superb examination of Labour’s administrative bellyflops during the 1970s, which premièred at the National last year. Some time ago, Graham was asked to update his 2008 play, Tory Boyz, about homosexuality in the Conservative party. Over the same period, the
Decent, clever, charming, eloquent, hard-working, conscientious and terribly, terribly nice, Shirley Williams is one of Britain’s best-loved politicians. Mark Peel’s admiring biographybegins in Chelsea in 1930. Shirley, as he matily calls her, was the eldest daughter of the political philosopher George Catlin and the bestselling author Vera Brittain. Life at home was affluent, comfortable and
The Clangers are back. And not just on television. At PMQs, both the party leaders tried to embarrass each other with solecisms, exaggerations – and, yes, clangers – which they’d dropped in the past. Ed Miliband led with the cost of living crisis and said ‘record numbers are now working part-time’. Cameron retaliated with a
Question Time last night featured Tory bad boy, and granny’s favourite, Adam Afriyie. Gosh he was a spectacle to behold. Coiffed and primped like a Savile Row supermodel, he looked as if he’d spent six months in makeup. His tailored suit was as smooth as Clingfilm. His hair was a combed flap of silvery darkness.
A feast of pleasures, and some annoyances, at the Trike. Handbagged, by Moira Buffini, is a fictional account of the weekly audiences between Mrs Thatcher and the Queen. The staging is extremely odd. Buffini gives monarch and prime minister two impersonators each. This enables us to trace the minor developments in hair colour and frock
Here’s a favourite Tory joke. Question: What does ‘BBC’ stand for? Answer: Buggers Broadcasting Communism. David Cameron seemed tempted to try this gag at PMQs today. He mentioned the Beeb four times in sardonic asides. ‘Let’s praise the BBC for once,’ he said, bitingly. He woke this morning, he said, to a BBC report stating
A good honest debating chamber. That’s how Question Time is billed. In fact it’s an unseemly gold-rush for applause. The panelists are a set of needy egos with semi-fictionalised hairdos. And the audience is composed of wonks and party activists posing as disinterested voters. Last night’s episode was particularly fractious. The crowd was keen to
Brecht in the West End? Quite a rarity. Jonathan Church’s zippy and stylish version of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui arrives from the Chichester Festival garlanded with plaudits. Brecht’s wartime allegory was intended as a warning to America that its idolisation of gangsters made it vulnerable to a fascist takeover. Ui begins as a
How appropriate. Barking in Essex, a farce about gangsters, has been dishonestly billed as ‘a new comedy’. The script was written in 2005 by Clive Exton (1930–2007), who pre-dates Woody Allen by half a decade. The storyline — thieves quarrel over stolen loot — is a trusty antique featured in ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ and in
