Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Miliband survives! That news should steady Labour nerves. For today at least. Their leader has the knack of turning near-certain defeat into absolutely-certain catastrophe, but he bumbled through PMQs this afternoon without suffering a serious setback. He has so little ground from which to attack the government that he had to lead on a niche
‘Anyone here from the Spectator?’ Last night a packed meeting at Downhills Primary in Haringey began with this ominous query from the chairman, Clive Boutle, who leads a local campaign against academies. Seated at the side of the hall I kept quiet. ‘No one?’ said Boutle, ‘Great, we’re safe.’ The meeting had attracted about 800
Frank Rich loved it. ‘Noises Off,’ said the great N’Yawk critic, ‘is, was and always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime.’ Michael Frayn conceived the idea of writing a farce about farce while watching one of his early plays from the wings. The frantic hustle-bustle of the actors behind the scenes was
Director Phyllida Lloyd on Meryl Streep’s eerily accurate portrayal of the Iron Lady Maybe she’s lost interest. Perhaps she’s just knackered. Almost certainly she’s had a bellyful of listening to herself talking about her film, The Iron Lady. When I meet Phyllida Lloyd, who also directed the 2008 smash hit, Mamma Mia, I’m expecting to
Michael Grandage says farewell to the Donmar with a farewell play. Richard II tells of a glorious but profligate king compelled to hand over his realm to a workmanlike, Steady Eddie successor. Entirely devoid of romantic interest, and with only teeny-weeny roles for women, this is not a show-stopping Shakespeare favourite. It appeals to specialists
Juno and the Paycock is a slice of documentary realism from the earliest years of the Irish Free State. The skint Boyle family are living like a gang of hobbits in the leprotic ruins of a grand Dublin townhouse. The paint blisters and peels. Diseased mortar crumbles into scabby flakes. The plaster-work centrepiece on the
Inept, useless, incompetent, maladroit, hopeless, clumsy, crap. With thesaurus-rifling regularity Ed Miliband comes to PMQs and delivers a performance which is inept, useless, incompetent, maladroit, hopeless, clumsy and crap. The only virtue the Labour leader has is consistency. He’s consistently worse than last week. In theory he should have scored some damage today. Unemployment is
It’s the usual old muddle. You take a Shakespeare classic and you time-travel it to an alien century, usually the present one, which has no connection with its historic setting. The plan, we’re always told, is to generate that supremely irrelevant attribute, ‘relevance’. Director Dominic Cooke has fast-forwarded The Comedy of Errors to modern London
Ed Miliband had an open goal today. And he whacked it straight over the bar. Cameron was in trouble from the start. Having placated the rebel wing of his party with vague talk about ‘repatriating powers’ he is now expected to deliver. But he can’t make specific demands without weakening his hand at the negotiations
They can’t even be bothered to think of a decent title. Good thing too. The Riots, at the Trike, is a rush job, a gripping and pacey attempt to analyse the disturbances that engulfed Britain last August. Cops, criminals and community leaders have been interviewed by Gillian Slovo, who fashioned their statements into a dramatic
It was vicious. It was frenetic. It was full of rage and class-hatred. It was great political sport. If you like a serious punch-up, the Commons at mid-day was the place to be. The viewing figures at home were boosted by the many millions of strikers who couldn’t quite make their local anti-cuts demo and
It’s a palace drama with all the trimmings. Trevor Nunn’s new production, The Lion in Winter, plunges us into the court of Henry II and his spurned wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, as they struggle to decide which of their three sons should inherit the throne. Eleanor, held prisoner in a deluxe royal fortress, has been
If Roman Abramovich owned the Labour party, Ed Miliband would be toast by now. The floundering opposition leader gave the sort of inept, predictable and ill-organised performance at PMQs that would get a manager sacked in the Premiership. It scarcely helps that Mr Miliband seems to prepare for these sessions like a deluded psychic. He
‘I’m off to see a play about a man who kills his dad,’ I told my five-year-old as I left the house. ‘Because he didn’t give him any ice-cream?’ he said. Mmm, I wondered, it’s possible that Hamlet harboured some childhood grudge against Claudius over a Mr Whippy refusal episode. But such meta-textual speculation is
I take no pleasure in saying this but the director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, appears to have lost his sense of propriety. Or possibly the balance of his mind. He’s asked John Hodge (author of the Trainspotting screenplay) to write a sitcom about the Great Terror. And, rather than bunging it in the
Hot summer, drippy autumn. Ed Miliband’s performances have declined steeply after the heady highs of July. He came to PMQs today badly needing to fight like a champion. Things looked rosy for him at the weekend. And they got better overnight. We learned that a pilot scheme to fast-track incoming tourists last summer had allowed
Long may it lie in ruins. Wilton’s Music Hall, in the East End of London, is a wondrous slice of Victoriana which exploits its failing grandeur to the max. All visitors are implored to find a couple of quid for the restoration effort. But decay and dilapidation are the best things about it. Every wrinkled
Last night, as we mentioned yesterday and the day before, was The Spectator’s debate on whether Britain should cut its overseas aid budget. Here, for CoffeeHousers who couldn’t attend the event, is Lloyd Evans’ review of it: Chair: Rod Liddle Proposing: Ian Birrell, Richard Dowden, Stephen Glover Opposing: Prof Paul Collier, Alan Duncan MP,
The Hair Shirt walked abroad at PMQs today. Those attending the Square Mile sleepover finally forced their agenda into the political mainstream. The question is, what is their agenda? A protest that doesn’t define its programme allows others to define it for them. And today both party leaders tried to harness the anti-capitalist spirit for
It sounds like mission impossible. To celebrate this year’s 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, the RSC set itself the task of mounting a play about the controversies surrounding the translation. A drama, therefore, entirely lacking in drama. No action or spectacle, no romance or comedy, no surprise twists or last-minute poisonings. Just people
