Lloyd Evans

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 apartment. This Manhattan-loft gesture exposes the impossibility of making the Donmar’s airy spaces look like a cramped one-bedroom flat in the wife-beating district of New Orleans. The grime, the physical claustrophobia are missing from Rob Ashford’s production but these are the only failings in this fabulous, horrible, thrilling, galling, hair-pricklingly uncomfortable show.

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 that Auden, a gay, left-wing, pacifist democrat, was keen to advertise his contempt for the uxorious, High Church, monarch-loving imperialist. But the severity of his scorn and its blatant falsehood (Tennyson knew half a dozen languages and was famed for the brilliance of his conversation) suggest that Auden’s real feelings may have been more complex than he liked to admit.

Spike Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall Hampstead The Black Album Cottesloe Good old Spike. Wonderful, charming, innocent Spike who could skewer authority with a child’s unthinking acuity. ‘Where were you born?’ asked the recruiting sergeant when he was conscripted. ‘India,’ said Spike. ‘Which part?’ ‘All of me.’ Ben Power and Tim Carroll have had the inspired idea of sifting the highlights of Spike’s wartime diaries and turning them into a singalong comedy tribute biography. But hang on. What’s a singalong comedy tribute biography?

Jerusalem Royal Court Dreams of Violence Soho Lock him up. On paper, the central character of Jez Butterworth’s new play looks like a worthless nuisance, a menace to society. Rooster Byron lives in a derelict caravan and earns cash by supplying children with controlled drugs. He’s a scroundrel, a drunkard, a liar, a sponger, a womaniser, an absentee father, possibly a burglar too. He’s also a charmer, a spinner of yarns, a laugh. The action takes place on St George’s day and Rooster’s band of followers are preparing to resist the council’s efforts to evict him and throw him in jail. Meanwhile, a 15-year-old girl has gone missing and her distraught father (a former member of Rooster’s gang) is convinced Rooster knows her whereabouts.

Forbidden Broadway Menier Chocolate Factory Dr Korczak’s Example Arcola High hopes at the Chocolate Factory. The Southbank’s liveliest producing house has a great record for taking shows into the West End. Musicals are a speciality and the latest has just arrived from New York. Forbidden Broadway was created nearly three decades ago by rookie writer Gerard Alessandrini who hoped it might earn him some hackwork as a lyricist. The show ran for 27 years. In this version, spruced up and adapted for London, every aspect of theatre gets a splattering. Costly tickets, tacky souvenir shops, greedy impresarios, the glut of film revivals and the use of video projections instead of real sets.

Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme Hampstead Carrie’s War Apollo I want to be nice about this play but I simply can’t. Look at the idiotic title for starters. Frank McGuinness sets his drama in an Ulster barracks where a gang of recruits are preparing to fight the Hun in France. The characters, though competently drawn, are a weeny bit predictable. There’s the Belfast bullyboy, the young priest besieged by doubt, the shy kid whose mother is a closet Catholic and the Brokeback Mountain couple whose manful back-slapping hugs are a trifle more enthusiastic than strict camaraderie requires. The most fully realised character, Kenneth Pyper, is a mercurial jester who dominates the barracks with his insouciant rhetoric and unpredictable menace.

The Cherry Orchard Old Vic A Skull in Connemara Riverside Here’s a peculiarity of Chekhov productions that tour the world. There’s never any furniture. OK, there’s some. A card table maybe, a few spindly chairs, a samovar, a hat-stand, the odd stool. Matchwood accessories. But the sturdy oaken mammoths of Victorian decor, the chests and dressers, the sideboards and book-cases, are never there. Putting the contents of a dacha into a jumbo jet and flying it around the globe makes no economic sense. So a bric-à-brac design is the preferred option, with the actors bravely attempting to suggest Russian solidity and substance while perched on milking stools and pouring wine into glasses tagged with ‘Oxfam 50p’ labels.

A Doll’s House Donmar The Observer Cottesloe Amazing guy, Ibsen. Still scribbling away at the age of 181, the Norwegian genius has teamed up with under-rated Spooks writer Zinnie Harris to create a new version of A Doll’s House. They’ve shifted the setting from 19th-century Norway to London in 1909 and promoted Thomas from the provincial bourgeoisie to parliament. Odd choice. Putting the play at the heart of the British Empire adds not one ounce of dramatic weight, and if Thomas is a leading democratic statesman his unworldly Puritanism seems bizarre and incredible. The good news is that Harris has helped her co-author discover a knack for comedy he never showed as a solo writer. Numerous ribald Ibsenities have been restored to the script.