Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic
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Ingredient X Royal Court, until 19 June Canary Hampstead, until 12 June In the old days the Royal Court knew that the best way to entertain local millionaires was to stage plays that wallowed in distress and squalor and featured four crack addicts in a squat stabbing each other to death with infected needles. Things
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Love the Sinner Cottesloe, until 10 July Ditch Old Vic Tunnels, Waterloo Approach Road, until 26 June Bickering vicars at the National. A new play by Drew Pautz invites us to consider whether the Church should ordain gay clergypersons. It’s a paradox that an organisation run by men in skirts is so vexed by the
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A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky Lyric, Hammersmith, until 5 June Counting the Ways Oval House The Lyric theatre in Hammersmith has an eccentric approach to the dearth of writing talent. Unable to find a good playwright, it has commissioned three bad ones to showcase their talentlessness in a single work. One assumes that
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‘Heroin?’ I say to Simon Russell Beale. ‘Sorry?’ he says. ‘To relax after a show. To come down off the high. You take heroin?’ ‘Oh yes, yes,’ he says. ‘Yes… if only. Well, as you can probably tell from my shape I like my beer. I can’t imagine a performance without a pint or two
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Dirty White Boy: Tales of Soho Trafalgar Studio 2, until 22 May Holding the Man Trafalgar Studio 1, until 3 July Blogs and blogging, bloggers and bloggery. What’s it all about? At first sight blogomania looks like an entirely new literary form. A second glance reveals that it’s the oldest genre of the lot: oral
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The holiday season is upon us, but it’s nothing to celebrate, says Lloyd Evans. Tourism is torture, no matter how you do it Oh God. Here it comes again. The days lengthen, the temperature climbs, the pollen spreads and the mighty armies of foreign invaders prepare to make their move. It’s not illegal immigrants who
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Women Beware Women Olivier, in rep until 4 July Hair Gielgud, booking until January 2011 Women Beware Women deserves a subtitle: spectators beware seldom revived classics. Thomas Middleton’s 1622 play is set in the duke’s court at Florence, where greed, lust, incest and the hunger for power are running rampant. Middleton is much admired, little
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Counted? County Hall, until 22 May The Real Thing Old Vic, until 5 June Voting is so irrational as to qualify as an act of religious devotion. The process involves a fabulous confluence of approximations. Candidates offer a pattern of promises. Voters select the pattern that most closely meets their needs. And though there may
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Porn — The Musical Theatre 503, until 1 May Posh Royal Court, until 22 May Here’s the rule. Provocative title equals lousy show. The playbill Porn — The Musical filled my heart with misgivings as I made the long trek south of the Thames to a venue at a Battersea boozer. The room above the
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Last week’s Spectator debate — ‘Britain’s in decline again. Pity Cameron is a Heath not a Thatcher’ — looked at the nature of a future Tory government under David Cameron. Last week’s Spectator debate — ‘Britain’s in decline again. Pity Cameron is a Heath not a Thatcher’ — looked at the nature of a future
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Torn with grief, Melvyn Bragg has produced a condolence book for the South Bank Show (born 1978, died of neglect, 2010). These 25 vignettes, based on the best of his interviews, are more than just the cosy clippety-cloppety sounds of an old cowboy trotting into the sunset. They offer intriguing comments on the film-making process
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The Empire Royal Court, until 1 May Polar Bears Donmar, until 22 May The Royal Court’s stuffy little upstairs theatre is hosting a new play about cultural imperialism. D.C. Moore sets his scene in Helmand where a young English corporal finds himself morally compromised by his desire to torture a Taleban prisoner. The twist is
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London Assurance Olivier, in rep until 2 June Bedroom Farce Duke of York’s, booking to 10 July Trickster nature has been maliciously kind to Simon Russell Beale. It made him the leading actor of his generation and instilled in him a desire to perform Shakespeare’s awesome roll-call of warrior princes. It also built him like
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The choppers, and the whoppers, were flying at Westminster today. David Cameron invited the prime minister to try a spot of accountability at PMQs. Would he admit that he scrimped on transport aircraft in Helmand? Brown, with breathtaking cheek and not a little rhetorical dexterity, flipped the question upside down. ‘I do not accept that
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The Gods Weep Hampstead, until 3 April Mrs Warren’s Profession Comedy, booking to 19 June Finding fault with Shakespeare is one of the RSC’s favourite activities. It’s now so fed up with King Lear that it has decided it needs to be scrapped and rewritten. A tall order? Not a bit of it. The company
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The Sanctuary Lamp Arcola, until 3 April Eigengrau Bush, until 10 April Furore fever still obsesses Irish playwrights. In Edwardian times there was nothing like a good old riot at the Abbey Theatre to get a new work established as a classic. Luvvie lore is replete with tales of mass walkouts and punch-ups at Dublin
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Cameron was scarcely trying at PMQs today. Show up, look a bit cross, slip in a joke or two, then sit down and wait for the Budget. That was his plan. When the PM offered his congratulations on BabyCam, the opposition leader quoted a text he’d received – ‘How do you find time for these
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Love Never Dies Adelphi, booking to October The Fever Chart Trafalgar Studio 2, booking to 3 April Love Never Dies has been bugging Andrew Lloyd Webber since 1990. He felt that the Phantom of the Opera needed a sequel and he’s been working on it for roughly three times as long as it took Tolstoy
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He did it. We saw him. It actually happened. History was made at PMQs today as Gordon Brown finally gave a direct answer to a direct question. Not only that, he admitted he’d been wrong about something. Tony Baldry (Con, Banbury) informed the PM that his assertion before the Chilcot Inquiry that defence spending has
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Private Lives Vaudeville, until 1 May Party Arts, until 13 March This isn’t right. This can’t be happening. She’s over 50. Quite a bit over. In fact, she’s 53 and she’s playing the 29-year-old heroine in one of the finest comedies in the repertoire. And she’s doing it in London. And she isn’t even English.