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Lloyd EvansThe Spectator |
Fawlty Towers at the Apollo may be the best museum piece you’ll ever see. A full-length play has been carved out of three episodes: ‘The Hotel...
Bad news for Rishi Sunak at PMQs. Caught out by Sir Keir Starmer, he handed Labour a wonderful soundbite for the next election: Rishi, the...
Minority Report is a plodding bit of sci-fi based on a Steven Spielberg movie made more than two decades ago. The setting is London, 2050, and every...
Questions from backbenchers dominated PMQs. Sir Edward Leigh is keen to end unfettered immigration and he announced a way to stop the boats that might...
John Cleese appeared in the West End this week. ‘I’ve got vertigo,’ he said as he walked on stage at the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue. ‘I cannot...
Agathe by Angela J. Davis follows the early phases of the Rwanda genocide 30 years ago. The subject, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, became prime minister on...
How does it feel to wake up and discover that you’re a socialist? We got the answer at PMQs where the TV cameras were trained on Dan Poulter – or...
Our Mutual Friend has been turned into a musical with a new title, London Tide, which sounds duller and more forgettable than the original. Why change...
Angela Rayner stood in for Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs, and she opened with fireworks. ‘They’re desperate to talk about my living arrangements,’...
Play-goers, beware. Director Robert Icke is back in town, and that means a turgid four-hour revival of a heavyweight classic with every actor...
Keir Starmer came to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) with a spring in his step. He announced that he owned ‘a rare unsigned copy’ of Liz...
The Divine Mrs S is a backstage satire set in the year 1800, when flouncy costumes and elaborate English prose were common cultural ornaments. On...
The Divine Mrs S is a backstage satire set in the year 1800, when flouncy costumes and elaborate English prose were common cultural ornaments. On...
If you’ve heard good reports about MJ the Musical, believe them all and multiply everything by a hundred. As a music-and-dance spectacular, the show...
Faith Healer is a classic Oirish wrist-slasher about three sponging half-wits caught in a downward spiral of penury, booze, squalor, sexual...
Sheridan Smith’s new show is more a mystery than a musical. Opening Night is based on a 1977 film by John Cassavetes that failed to attract a major...
Lloyd Evans has narrated this article for you to listen to. A strip club, a prison, a mental asylum, a Great War field hospital, an addiction clinic,...
At PMQs we saw the next year of politics condensed into a few seconds. Sir Keir Starmer asked the PM why he declined to call an election. ‘My...
Citizens’ assemblies will transform Britain. That’s the promise made by activists from groups like Extinction Rebellion. Labour has also mooted...
‘How are you going to pay me back?’ This is the eternal question of the hard-pressed dad as he hands £10 to a teenage son with an urgent...
Set in 1948, The Human Body is about four heroic women fighting to create the NHS despite opposition from right-wing extremists led by the ‘snob’...
The plot to shoot Diane Abbot dominated PMQs. The Tory donor, Frank Hester, reportedly said that the MP for Hackney North inspired violent thoughts in...
Podcast fever continues to dominate the political airwaves. The rewards for success are enormous and popular podcasters are able to fill concert halls...
Double Feature is a new play by John Logan, whose credits include Skyfall. The subject is movie-making, and the action is set in 1964 in a Hollywood...
Jeremy Hunt is the spotty, speccy geek who doesn’t wear specs and doesn’t have spots. But ‘geek’ is very much Hunt’s brand. He’s a gangly,...
Sarah Snook, who appeared in Succession, takes centre stage in Kip Williams’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only novel. The best thing about The...
Sir Keir Starmer’s advisers have very short memories. At PMQs, the Labour leader mocked Liz Truss for visiting America to ‘flog a new book in...
Big budget, huge stage, massive temptation. The Lyttelton is a notorious elephant-trap for designers who feel obliged to fill every inch of space with...
The big issue at PMQs today was the motion calling for an end to hostilities in Gaza. In itself this is extraordinary, bordering on the outright...
Fifteen years after penning his mega-hit Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth has knocked out a new drama. The slightly baffling title, The Hills of California,...
He strutted into the middle of the studio in dark slacks and a creaseless white shirt. Nippy, zestful, ready for anything. Rishi Sunak submitted to a...
Till the Stars Come Down is a raucous, high-energy melodrama set at a wedding in Hull. The writer, Beth Steel, focuses on three female characters and...
Lloyd Evans has narrated this article for you to listen to. The old man next door asked me to collect his parcel from the food bank. ‘Sure,’ I...
Lloyd Evans has narrated this article for you to listen to. The old man next door asked me to collect his parcel from the food bank. ‘Sure,’ I...
‘Apologise!’ This was the bogus battle-cry that rang out repeatedly at today’s PMQs. Rishi Sunak was asked to genuflect to his enemies and show...
The row over Richard III rumbles on. Disability groups have objected to the Globe’s forthcoming production in which Michelle Terry will take the...
Plaza Suite is a sketch show by Neil Simon set in a luxury New York hotel in 1968. The play is rarely revived and it’s never been staged in the West...
Let’s hear it for Phil. The unexpected hero of PMQs was an Iceland employee in Warrington (referred to as ‘Phil’, no surname given) whom Sir...
Don’t Destroy Me is the rather breathless title of Michael Hastings’s first play which he wrote when he was just 18. The material draws on his...
Sir Keir’s spin doctors have been enjoying clips of Tony Blair’s performances as opposition leader. In the mid-1990s, Blair took aim at John Major...
I love aphorisms. As a kid I used to pore over my parents’ book of quotations, relishing its gems and treasures like the defiant wit of Palmerston....
The agony could strike at any moment. Daggering pains in my lower back demanded correction. Not just painkillers, I needed a permanent cure. ‘Thai...
The Enfield Haunting is a good old-fashioned horror show that wants to be a documentary as well. It’s based on a hocus-pocus yarn that made the...
Wow. For Rishi fans, that was one to forget. The Tory leader lacked his usual fluency and focus at PMQs today. Instead of a hungry whippet leaping out...
Many of today’s theatre directors seem to believe that Shakespeare’s work was a huge mistake which they have a duty to correct. According to Max...
Both leaders seemed pretty chipper at PMQs. With an election likely this year, Rishi Sunak has nothing to lose and Sir Keir Starmer has everything to...
Pandemonium is a new satire about the Covid nightmare that uses the quaint style of the Elizabethan masque. Armando Iannucci’s play opens with Paul...
Looking back at the year’s West End theatre, a few shows stand out. First, the best. Vanya, starring Andrew Scott at the Duke of York’s Theatre,...
Infinite Life is about five American women, all dumpling-shaped, who sit in a hotel garden observing a hunger strike. Some of them haven’t touched...