Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
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Boris looks quite the statesman as he deals with the Ukraine crisis. MPs have spotted this and they want to join in. At PMQs the chamber was a-flutter with the colours of Ukraine. Female MPs sported blue skirts and gold blouses. One wore a pair of bright yellow tights from M&S’s ‘Je Suis Kiev’ range.
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How at home Rishi Sunak looks in the company of academics. The chancellor delivered the 34th Mais Lecture this afternoon at the Bayes Business School in east London. Standing at the lectern in his dapper blue suit, he had the air of a cerebral super-monk bred on figs and yogurt. He’s the first British chancellor
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The Forest is the latest thriller from the French dramatist Florian Zeller, translated by Oscar winner Christopher Hampton. It’s a well-worn yarn of adultery, betrayal and vengeance set among the yuppie classes. The action is located in France but the actors speak in Home Counties accents. (In theory, at least. Some are better at imitating
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Remember Alex Salmond? The former SNP leader is back. Since 2017 his little-known programme, The Alex Salmond Show, has aired weekly on RT which receives its funding from the Kremlin. Today at PMQs the party leaders combined to plug Salmond’s programme and to boost his ratings. It wasn’t a debate. It was a 30-minute Salmond
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Never Not Once has a cold and forbidding title but it starts as an amusing tale set in an LA apartment. We meet Allison, a happily married lesbian, whose grown-up daughter, Eleanor, arrives with a hunky new boyfriend to show off. This set-up has the makings of a flatshare sitcom. You combine a straight younger
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A Number, by Caryl Churchill, is a sci-fi drama of impenetrable complexity. It’s set in a future society where cloning has become possible for those on modest incomes. A Cockney father reveals to his grown-up son that he’s a replica of his older brother who died, aged four, in a car crash that also killed
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And still they try. MPs are desperate to get the Prime Minister to quit, live on TV, during PMQs. As if that’s about to happen. Sir Starmer has spent the last week polishing his puns. The busy wordsmith has spotted that the verb ‘scrap’ may mean ‘fight’ as well as ‘abolish’. Inspired by this linguistic
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It’s getting silly now. London’s subsidised theatres aren’t just competing to put on the worst play of the year but to create the worst production of all time. The Young Vic’s new effort, Conundrum, is an impenetrable rant which even the Guardian criticised. The Royal Court enters the fray with Alistair McDowall’s The Glow, directed
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Calm returned to the bridge. Big Dog looked comfortable in the chamber as Sir Keir Starmer quizzed him at PMQs. It started with an exchange of fireworks. Sir Keir made a statement about Boris’s suggestion that he failed to bring Jimmy Savile to justice when he was director of public prosecutions. He called this slur
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Moulin Rouge wins no marks for its storyline. A struggling Parisian theatre is bought out by an evil financier who wants to marry the venue’s star, Satine, whose heart belongs elsewhere. The show opens like a pantomime with a bantering style and cheesy jokes. And there are passages of physical comedy that look weird amid
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Sir Keir Starmer has a weakness, and the Tories have spotted it. His weakness is Sir Lindsay Hoyle. The Speaker likes to interrupt PMQs when noise in the chamber exceeds a threshold known only to him. During Sir Keir’s cross-examination of Boris today, he broke in three times to deliver pompous mini-sermons that might have
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Producers are getting jittery again. Large-scale shows look risky when a single infection can postpone an entire show. Hence Poirot and More in the West End. This is a conversation piece in which David Suchet talks about his career as Agatha Christie’s most celebrated nosy parker. Not much technical rehearsal is needed and Suchet relies
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Does Boris lie? Well, yes, of course, he’s a politician. That’s the standard response to the honesty question. And in some circumstances, we forgive MPs for telling whoppers. Christian Wakeford, elected as a Tory for Bury South, has just joined the Labour party and effectively admitted that he told a pack of lies to voters
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Hampstead Theatre has revived a play about Peggy Ramsay, the legendary West End agent who shaped the careers of Joe Orton, Robert Bolt, David Hare and others. We first meet her on the phone to a dramatist whose new script is good but, warns Peggy, it must not be produced because it will damage his
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Haunted. Ashen. Defeated. That’s how the PM looked in parliament this afternoon as he faced the flamethrowers of the opposition. He began with a long apology about the May 2020 party in Downing Street which he said he had attended. And he openly acknowledged the ‘rage’ of the British public. His excuse – embarrassingly flimsy
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Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust has been adapted at the Bridge. The yarn is set in Oxford, and the surrounding countryside, and the whole of the first act is devoted to exposition because Pullman’s fantasy world is impenetrably complicated. The chief character, a dim-witted child, wanders around the place and listens while terms like
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Poor Sir Keir Starmer. He’s having a bad pandemic. The Labour leader was absent again at PMQs. His gifted and charismatic deputy, Angela Rayner, got another chance to display her credentials as his replacement. Rayner, with her necklace of white beads, looked like a duchess launching a battleship. She and Boris flirted constantly, which may
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Merry Christmas – but not for those who have earned a place on my naughty list. From Jacinda Ardern to Carrie’s critics, here’s a catalogue of all those who must do better in 2022: Ant and Dec. Nope. Still don’t know which is which. Each needs to follow normal practice and use a Christian name/surname
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Migrants continue to cross the Channel and to reach Britain by other means. But what happens once they arrive? The answer for many is a new life of boredom and endless waiting. Dotted around the south coast are hotels where these people are housed, hidden out of sight. I went to meet some of them.
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Jack and the Beanstalk is a big, sprawling family show that opens with a baffling gesture. A booming voiceover announces that Hackney is being menaced by some unseen threat. Enter an evil monster, Funella Fleshcreep, who wears facial moisturiser made from liquefied avocado. This green-cheeked ogre is challenged by the virtuous characters, Jack Trot and