Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
The best argument in favour of state funding of the arts was made in the middle of the 18th century. In 1753 an Act of Parliament established the personal collection of Sir Hans Sloane as a national resource, ‘to be preserved and maintained not only for the Inspection and Entertainment of the learned and the
A marvellous novelty at the Tower of London. The Banqueting Suite of the New Armouries has been converted into a pop-up theatre and the Tower authorities have welcomed a new play following the rise and fall (into two pieces) of Anne Boleyn. Joanna Carrick, who directs her own script, has chosen a tricky format. Two
How fashions change. Peter Nichols’s adultery drama, Passion Play, will seem tame and rather conventional to modern audiences. It was written in 1981 at a time when the rites and idioms of therapy hadn’t penetrated every level of our culture. Back then the candid scrutiny of one’s emotions, supervised by a ruminating analyst, was a
Andrew Adonis enjoyed a week of glory in 2010. The former Lib Dem activist was asked to join Labour’s negotiating team as they tried to forge a coalition with Nick Clegg in the aftermath of 6 May general election. Adonis admits that his account of those five days is ‘vivid, partisan and angry’. And it
A mood of giggles and mischief descended on PMQs today. David Cameron is in America – attempting to cure insomniacs by explaining Tory Euro-scepticism to them – and his role was taken by Nick Clegg. Harriet Harman, a notoriously sluggish debater, stood in for Ed Miliband. It’s said that when Harman trained as a solicitor
The Weir is the ultimate hit-from-nowhere. It was written in 1997 by the 26-year-old Conor McPherson. It opened at the Royal Court Upstairs and glided over to Broadway and then toured America. The script defies every rule of theatrical physics. It’s wordy and static, it’s entirely devoid of action or spectacle, and the atmosphere is
Amazing news at the National. Nicholas Hytner has invented a time machine that can bring Shakespeare to bumpkins who’ve never bothered to read him. His up-to-date Othello begins with Venice’s powerful élite dressed in two-piece suits, like Manchester Utd on tour, and striding around a war-room plotting military action against ‘the Turk’. In Act II,
They’re back. Howard Davies and his translator Andrew Upton had a well-deserved hit in 2007 with Gorky’s Philistines at the Lyttelton. Children of the Sun, which Gorky wrote in jail in 1905, is a prophetic allegory that foretells the destruction of Russia’s weak, idle and pretentious upper classes. We’re in a country mansion where a
Back to business at PMQs. Our ailing NHS, and its many-headed crises, were today’s key battle-ground. We hear of sick people being parked in ever tinier and more humiliating confinements: corridors, trolleys, airing cupboards, pill depositories, laundry baskets, spare gaps between drinks’ machines. All these locations, and worse, are currently sheltering patients awaiting the healing
Never a dull moment at the Jermyn Street Theatre. It’s a titchy venue, the size of a gents’ loo, nestling beneath a cavernous flight of stairs in the nameless hinterland between druggy Soho and tarty Mayfair. The current proprietors, aiming for an air of scholastic amateurism, are on the hunt for ‘unknown and forgotten classics’.
A lap of honour at the Royal Court. Bruce Norris has been one of the big discoveries of artistic director Dominic Cooke, who takes his bow by directing The Low Road. Norris’s greatest hit, Clybourne Park, was a savage and illuminating satire about racism. His next trick is to examine the burning issue of the
‘The house that Ho Chi Minh built.’ That’s how Nicholas Hytner refers to his ample north London home. In 1989, at the age of 34, he was hired by Cameron Mackintosh to direct the musical Miss Saigon. ‘It just felt like a huge lark,’ he said at the time. The show ran for ten years
Inspired writer, John Logan. His 2009 play, Red, delved brilliantly into the gloom-ridden, suicidal mind of the misanthropic modernist painter Mark Rothko. The play’s unflinching and sordid honesty earned the author, and his director Michael Grandage, a bagful of gongs on either side of the Atlantic. The pair have reunited for Logan’s new play, Peter
Impossible, surely. The Book of Mormon could never live up to the accolades lavished on it by America’s critics. ‘Blissfully original, outspoken, irreverent and hilarious,’ was a typical review. The three authors are formidably gifted. Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave us South Park, while Robert Lopez is the co-writer of Avenue Q. As a
Declan Donnellan is riding high. His acclaimed production of the burlesque classic Ubu Roi has confirmed his membership of the elite group of British directors who enjoy renown across Continental Europe and beyond. The critics cheered his French-language production of Alfred Jarry’s anarchic satire when it reached Paris earlier this month. The show, created by
Study the greats. That’s the advice to all budding playwrights. And there are few contemporary dramatists more worthy of appreciative scrutiny than Bruce Norris, whose savage and hilarious comedy, Clybourne Park, bagged the Pulitzer Prize in America before transferring to the West End where it stunned audiences with its macabre revelations about bourgeois attitudes to
The sheer workload. That’s the first big surprise in Matthew Laban’s absorbing history of the Speakership since 1945. Typically, the Speaker rises at dawn and holds several hours of preparatory meetings before parliamentary business starts after lunch. Though helped by two deputies, the Speaker must remain on duty into the small hours. Loneliness and overwork
Let’s have a breather. It seemed like a truce had been tacitly declared between the party leaders at today’s PMQs. Instead of going on the offensive, Cameron and Miliband turned their solemn and unified gaze towards the sorrows of the eastern Mediterranean. Miliband asked about Syria. Cameron used the opportunity to take a pot-shot at
Peter Morgan has extracted more cash from the royal ‘brand’ than the Buckingham Palace giftshop. He’s at it again with The Audience, a fictional dramatisation of the weekly conversations between the Queen and her first ministers. This is a smart idea carried off with intelligence and plenty of style. Morgan dispenses with a linear parade
There comes a moment in a PM’s journey when he crests the ridge and starts on the downhill leg. David Cameron made that unhappy transition today. PMQs began with a gag from a Labour backbencher. Tom Blenkinsop: ‘The prime minister may believe there’s no alternative to the double dip. But some in the cabinet believe
