Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
Impressions, rather than substance, dominated today’s PMQs. With the Brown premiership downgraded from stable to critical over the weekend, this could have been a career-terminating ordeal for the soggy-eyed old panda but he got through it pretty well. By the end he was still confidently afloat, if not quite buoyant. Cameron raised the question of
Lloyd Evans charts the death of political satire and looks to where comedy is heading next Live comedy ought to be extinct. For five years the internet has been waving an eviction order in its face, but despite the YouTube menace, and its threat of death-by-a-thousand-clips, live stand-up is blossoming. You’ll have noticed this if
A total cheat at PMQs today. It was a swine flu swindle. Only a week has passed since Labour’s manifesto-busting tax-hikes were announced in Darling’s bankruptcy budget and the MPs’ expenses scandal is still pumping out clouds of noxious smoke and yet Cameron allowed himself to be persuaded that the pig-bug business equals a State of Emergency.
Wall Royal Court Alphabetical Order Hampstead David Hare, that marvellously sophisticated, dazzlingly eloquent and faintly ridiculous left-wing brahmin, has written a sequel to Via Dolorosa, his absorbing meditation on the woes of Israel. After the blithering drivel of Seven Jewish Children, Caryl Churchill’s impenetrably tedious response to Israel’s incursion into Gaza, the Royal Court has
Calendar Girls Noël Coward Only When I Laugh Arcola Ooh dear, the critics have been terribly sniffy about Calendar Girls. This dazzlingly funny, shamelessly sentimental and utterly captivating tale of middle-aged women posing naked to raise cash for charity should have won five-star plaudits all round. But the reviews have thrown a veil over its
The highlight of the Budget began the moment Alistair Darling sat down. David Cameron’s brief, savage and brilliantly detailed attack on Labour’s ‘decade of debt’ must rate as his best ever parliamentary performance. At 12:30 the Chancellor stood up and delivered his budget in the studious, methodical manner of a vicar running through the accounts
Lloyd Evans wanders round Inner Temple and discovers another world in the tangle of squares Where’s the best place to eat lunch in London? First let’s strike restaurants off the list. At a restaurant your plate of recently throttled livestock will have been executed by a pimply sadist, cooked by a cursing psychopath and delivered
Maggie’s End Shaw Death and the King’s Horseman Olivier Here’s an unexpected treat. An angry left-wing play crammed with excellent jokes. Ed Waugh and Trevor Wood’s lively bad-taste satire starts with Margaret Thatcher’s death. A populist New Labour Prime Minister rashly opts to grant her a state funeral which prompts a furious reaction in Labour’s
Parlour Song Almeida Tusk Tusk Royal Court Back in 1995 Jez Butterworth got tagged with the ‘Most Promising Playwright’ beeper and he still hasn’t shaken it off. Butterworth is an excellent second-rate writer, he has a wonderful knack for quirky comic dialogue but he wants to be a Great Artist too. A pity. All a
Dido, Queen of Carthage Cottesloe The Overcoat Lyric Hammersmith Simple plays can be the hardest to get right. James Macdonald has made a dogged assault on the earliest work of Christopher Marlowe. The story is lifted wholesale from Virgil. After Troy’s fall Aeneas arrives in Carthage where Dido promptly falls in love with him. When
It looked the final victory of International Socialism as Brown wrapped up the G20 summit. Lenin himself couldn’t have been happier. The world’s banks have now effectively been merged into a global collective. There’ll be subsidies for the poor provided by the wealthy. Bonuses will be monitored. Salaries for top bankers may well be capped.
‘Eat Bankers For Breakfast’. At 7 am this morning the great pin-stripe banquet was due to start as protestors gathered outside the London Stock Exchange intent on disrupting the day’s business. After four hours, only a handful of hungry suit-scoffers had gathered under the slogan and their meagre buffet was being supervised by hundreds of
Madame de Sade Wyndhams New Boy Trafalgar Studio In the 1960s Mishima wrote a play about the Marquis de Sade. What’s it like? It’s like this. A Greek tragedy consisting entirely of choral speeches performed on the radio. The naughty nobleman’s wife and her family are assembled on stage, along with a pair of sidekicks,
The B-team were back today. With Gordon Brown abroad on Superman duty it was left to Hague and Harman to slug it out. Harman was as useless as ever, unsteady, inarticulate, hectoring, self-satisfied. Rather than engage with the debate she ducks incoming fire and replies with a prepared weapon. Yet again we heard that the
Berlin Hanover Express Hampstead Invasion! Soho When TV writers turn to the stage there’s often a suspicion of fly-tipping, of rejected ideas being dumped in the hope that others will tidy them away. Ian Kennedy Martin, creator of The Sweeney, has come up with a cracking theme. Berlin, 1942. Two Irish diplomats grapple with the
A good old-fashioned punch-up at PMQs today. Much dust was raised, much smoke emitted and our old friend, the Truth, barely got a look in. Brown was ready and waiting for Cameron when he led on the surge in unemployment to 2 million. His note of piety was well received, at least by his fellow
Lloyd Evans visits the NoFit State Circus in Wales and watches an unusual rehearsal T here are lots of things you can’t do any more. Smoke in a pub. Buy a video recorder. Trust the bloke who runs your bank. And you can’t run away to the circus either. These days the wannabe stilt-walker or
Dancing at Lughnasa Old Vic Burnt by the Sun Lyttelton It’s almost physically painful to see the vandalism wrought at the Old Vic by the new stage configuration. It’s like looking at some doomed Darwinian experiment, a cloven-hoofed butterfly, a spaniel with a trunk, a winged slug. Worse still is the fussy, over-ambitious set for
England People Very Nice Olivier Toyer Arts It’s been a busy year for offence-junkies. Richard Bean’s new play has prompted anti-racism protests at the National. What for? The play is certainly racist in the narrow sense that it mocks the distinctions between races (or regions, for the most part, since Bean belongs to the same
Vintage PMQs today. A decent debate, good jokes and a clear winner. With Brown in America practising his lecture-circuit speech on Congress, his beloved colleague and would-be assassin, Hattie Harman stepped up. She made a sloppy start and forgot to mention yesterday’s massacre in Lahore. A sleek, well-briefed Hague used his first question to remind
