Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
From our UK edition
The Power of Yes Lyttelton My Real War 1914–? Trafalgar Studios Here comes Hare. And he’s got the answer to the credit crunch. His energetic, well-researched and richly informative new work opens with an actor playing the writer himself (curious frown, Hush Puppies) as he sets out to discover why the markets jumped off a
From our UK edition
Poppy day came early to Westminster today. Brown began proceedings by reciting the names of the 37 men killed in Afghanistan over the summer. This took two minutes. The house was silent, funereal, almost awe-struck with the solemnity of the occasion. Brown looked like a man deeply moved by personal grief as he worked his
From our UK edition
Michael Palin is the meekest, mildest and nicest of the Pythons. The latest chunk of his diaries traces his attempt during the 1980s to break away from his wacky colleagues and forge a film-making career in his own right. The title, Halfway to Hollywood, reflects his modest, circumspect nature. We first meet the millionaire filmstar
From our UK edition
Clever in its lack of cleverness. Cameron’s performance today was shrewd and unexciting, a speech of nursery-school simplicity. Large bland ideas, plain language. No detail. This was certainly no masterpiece. It didn’t have to be. Cameron’s in a holding pattern. Keep circling and he’ll land safely. Before he arrived, William Hague frustrated the eager delegates
From our UK edition
Breakfast at Tiffany’s Theatre Royal Haymarket Inherit the Wind Old Vic ‘What do you want?’ a film producer asks Holly Golightly about half an hour into Breakfast at Tiffany’s. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but if I find out I’ll tell you first.’ At this point my hopes for the evening collapsed. Rule one of
From our UK edition
Mother Courage and Her Children Olivier Speaking in Tongues Duke of York’s Mother Courage, Brecht’s saga of conflict and suffering, is set during the Thirty Years’ War. The title character is a maternal archetype who ekes out a perilous existence selling provisions to the warring factions and chasing off the recruiting sergeants who want to
From our UK edition
For Brown this was a doddle. He couldn’t fluff it. Expectations have sunk so low that all he had to do today was show up, try not to look too knackered, spout a few revivalist platitudes and make sure he didn’t fall over. The rebellion has stalled, the plotters are paralysed. Those who criticise won’t
From our UK edition
The Shawshank Redemption Wyndham’s Othello Trafalgar Studios All change at Wyndham’s. The wayward sophistication and creative adventure of Michael Grandage’s first West End season has drawn to a close and been replaced by a karaoke version of The Shawshank Redemption. Smart move. Cameron Mackintosh, the theatre’s owner, must be hoping that this stale piece of
From our UK edition
What a week for the LibDems. The conference began, as always, with the sound newspapers being arranged across sleeping faces as the mass snore-in started. A few hopeful souls wondered if the LibDems might finally tell us exactly what their party is for. And LibDems went about their usual business of behaving like some cuddly
From our UK edition
Punk Rock Lyric Hammersmith Judgment Day Almeida In rolls another bandwagon. And who’s that on board? It’s Simon Stephens, the playwright and panic profiteer, who likes to cadge a ride from any passing controversy. His latest play is about a teenage psycho who enacts a gory shoot-out at his local school. What a strange choice.
From our UK edition
There’s a great post on the Telegraph website highlighting 50 things the internet is killing off. Hand-writing, desk diaries, things like that. But what about those precious activities and institutions the internet was supposed to destroy and hasn’t? Here are six to get the ball rolling: Bookshops Each time I pass a bookshop, especially the
From our UK edition
Fathers Inside Soho Too True to be Good Finborough Oh, great. It’s one of those. Fathers Inside is a workshop-based outreach project directed by an actor/facilitator. Those last nine words encircle my heart like the clammy fingers of death. But the play is a surprise and offers a big, warm, manly handshake. It starts quietly.
From our UK edition
The Assault/The Last Days of Gilda Old Red Lion Eye/Balls Soho London in August. It’s the capital’s sabbatical. Theatre is all Edinburgh right now and the London-bound play-goer feels dislocated, irrelevant almost, alienated by accidents of chance and inclination, like a Hebrew at Christmas, a teetotaller on St Patrick’s day, an honest man in the
From our UK edition
Big Brother is dead. This is terrific news – particularly if you’re one of those morbid hacks who specialise in articles lamenting ‘the excessive trivialisation of our culture’. Even now the long dreary ‘think-pieces’ are being commissioned for the Sunday papers. We all know what they’ll say. Big Brother (born 2000, died 2010, RIP) is
From our UK edition
The Mountaintop Trafalgar Studios Hello Dolly! Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park Meet the black Elvis. A man who got up on stage, a man who ‘sang’, a man who was adored by millions, a man who was King. Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, is set in a Memphis hotel on the eve of Martin Luther
From our UK edition
Edinburgh is a flashers’ convention. Edinburgh is a flashers’ convention. Everyone wants exposure. They come to build their brand, to raise recognition levels among the oblivious, to smuggle themselves into your brain while you’re not looking. So don’t feel obliged to buy a ticket. Your attendance is sufficient reward. Performers know the fringe is a
From our UK edition
Lloyd Evans goes in search of culture on the rain-soaked streets of Edinburgh The crunch. That damn credit crunch. It hurt Scotland hardest of all. A worldwide reputation as a financial powerhouse? Gone. Dreams of independence? Severely truncated. Last year the Edinburgh Festival bore prophetic signs of imminent poverty, of homelessness, of doom. Free shows
From our UK edition
The Girlfriend Experience Young Vic Helen Globe Who exploits prostitutes? Men, of course. And women, too. In particular those feminist politicians, always at panic stations, always posing as moral redeemers, who promote the myth that there’s only one type of hooker in this country — the crackhead Albanian rape-slave living in an airing cupboard —
From our UK edition
A Streetcar Named Desire Donmar Too Close to the Sun Comedy Kissed by Brel Jermyn Street Streetcar opens with a strange spectacle. Christopher Oram’s lovely — too lovely — design has the upper circle decked out in peeling ironwork which soars across the boards and modulates into a chic spiral staircase overlooking the Kowalski’s open-plan
From our UK edition
Lloyd Evans celebrates Tennyson’s miraculous musicality ‘He had the finest ear of any English poet,’ said W.H. Auden. ‘He was also, undoubtedly, the stupidest.’ This famous jibe aimed at Tennyson (whose bicentenary falls on 6 August) is revealing in its shrill and almost triumphant bitchiness. Every age rejects the one before and it’s no surprise