Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Gone Too Far! Hackney Empire Eating Ice Cream on Gaza Beach Soho Piaf Donmar Anyone for a knife crime comedy? Bola Agbaje’s attempt to get laughs from our anxieties about blade-wielding teenagers might have been a disaster if the script hadn’t been so witty and its examination of the subdivisions within black culture so penetrating.
Deep Cut Traverse Jidariyya Royal Lyceum 4.48 Psychosis King’s Theatre Eco-Friendly Jihad Underbelly Please Don’t Feed The Models Underbelly Scaramouche Jones Assembly Rooms Absolution Assembly Rooms Snap! That’s the sound of the credit crunch biting into attendance figures at Edinburgh. This year the Royal Mile teems with unloved luvvies urging discounted tickets on sceptical punters,
Dybbuk King’s Theatre Britt on Britt Assembly Rooms Surviving Spike Assembly Rooms Perhaps it should be the Inter-notional Festival. The posh bit of Edinburgh, the International Festival, is incurably besotted with the idea of conceptual hybrids, of cross-fertilisation between cultures. Their first offering is Dybbuk, a show about Jews, ghosts and exorcism, set in Poland
Lloyd Evans on the esotericism of the Festival and the ragamuffin risk-taking of the Fringe Here we go again. Like some vast, hairy, attention-seeking arachnid, the Edinburgh Festival has settled its gross and gorgeous shape in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. Ever since its inception in 1947 the Festival has grown steadily and spawned a
Her Naked Skin Olivier Elaine Stritch At Liberty Shaw In 2004 Rebecca Lenkiewicz got the black spot from the Critics’ Circle. Sorry, I mean she was voted ‘most promising playwright’. Less a gong, more a millstone. Praising writers for what they’ve done is fine. Praising them for what they may do in future is like
Lloyd Evans talks to Matthew Bourne about his new ballet Dorian Gray and co-directing Oliver! Matthew Bourne is a whirlwind. He’s a dynamo, a powerhouse, a force of nature. He has created the busiest ballet company on earth and turned Britain into the world’s leading exporter of dance theatre. His breakthrough came in 1995 with
The Female of the Species Vaudeville Hangover Square Finborough The Frontline Shakespeare’s Globe A first-class Aussie bitch-fight has erupted over a new West End comedy. Joanna Murray-Smith’s satire opens with a famous feminist author, Margot Mason, being held at gunpoint by a deluded fan and forced to explain the contradictions in her work. Margot Mason
Zorro Garrick The Tailor and Ansty Old Red Lion Is Zorro any good? Forget the show for a second, look at the marketing. The stars are English, the story is American and the music, by the Gypsy Kings, is French with a strong Spanish flavour. That’s half the Western hemisphere covered. Nice work, everyone. Things
Lloyd Evans joins the dissident movement in a ritual exercise near the Chinese Embassy. He is unsettled to find himself understanding why China’s rulers get so paranoid about them Bong. Up go our hands. Bong. Down come our hands. Bong. We bend our knees. Bong. We crouch down slowly. Bong. We sweep our hands around
The Royal Court’s search for new scripts has gone global. Its tireless talent scouts, assisted by the British Council, fan out across France, Spain, Russia, Nigeria, Syria and Mexico laying on seminars, workshops and ‘residencies’. They go to India, too, although quite why the Court spends energy nurturing dramatists in a country with the world’s
On the Rocks Hampstead In My Name Trafalgar Studios All Nudity Shall Be Punished Union Uh oh. Writers writing about writers writing. Amy Rosenthal’s new play is set in 1916 in a Cornish village. D.H. Lawrence, suffering from writer’s block, has suggested to the publisher John Middleton Murry and his lover Katherine Mansfield, who is
Motion: Prince Charles was right: modern architecture is still all glass stumps and carbuncles. New rules at Intelligence Squared. For the debate on architecture the speakers were offered the use of a slide projector. Opening for the motion Roger Scruton described modern architecture as ‘a grammarless chaos’ in which buildings ‘aren’t made for the city
Black Watch Barbican Whatever Happened to Cotton Dress Girl? New End Divas Apollo Disney does death. That’s how Black Watch looks to me. The hit show has arrived in London with its bracing portrait of the famous Highland regiment. All its tactics and traditions are presented without criticism, including its devious recruitment policy. Get
2,000 Feet Away Bush Relocated Royal Court The Chalk Garden Donmar America is nuts about paedophiles. That’s the take-home message of Anthony Weigh’s new play 2,000 Feet Away, which stars Joseph Fiennes. The title refers to a provision of Megan’s law which sets out the minimum permissible distance between the home of a paedophile and
Lloyd Evans on the perils of being both playwright and critic ‘No man sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.’ Dr Johnson was speaking of a poet who looked to his friends for solace after his verses had been savaged in the press. He got none. That’s the risk all artists take. I’ve been through this
Afterlife Lyttelton Dickens Unplugged Comedy Afterlife is pH-neutral. It doesn’t enhance Michael Frayn’s reputation and doesn’t damage it either. Max Reinhardt was one of the great theatrical magicians of the 20th century and it’s easy to see what drew Frayn and his long-standing collaborator, the director Michael Blakemore, to the challenge of putting his life
Rosmersholm Almeida Love — The Musical Lyric Fat Pig Trafalgar Studio A Norwegian melodrama about suicide, socialism and thwarted sexual passion. If you saw that on the poster would you be tempted? Nor me. Add the authorship of Ibsen and you might change your mind but you’d be unwise. Rosmersholm is a clumsy, unengaging late
This ought to be a hit. The Les Mis team are back in the West End with another French classic. The Lady of the Camellias, by Alexandre Dumas fils, is the play that inspired Verdi’s La Traviata and the Garbo film Camille. Retitled Marguerite the story has been parked in wartime Paris where the leading
The Deep Blue Sea Vaudeville The Birthday Party Lyric Hammersmith Pygmalion Old Vic Osborne crushed Rattigan. Crudely stated, that’s what we’re told happened in 1956 when Osborne’s demotic new voice displaced Rattigan’s classier, cosier manner. Even now Rattigan’s reputation hasn’t fully recovered and The Deep Blue Sea, which premièred in 1952, is the first of
Lloyd Evans reports on the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared event No debate this month at Intelligence Squared. Instead Gore Vidal is interviewed by Melvyn Bragg. The 800-strong crowd start to applaud even before Vidal reaches the rostrum. White-haired, frail and wheelchair-bound, he is modestly dressed in a dark suit but he exudes a dangerous