Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans is The Spectator's sketch-writer and theatre critic

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Teletubby approach

The President’s Holiday Hampstead The Sea Haymarket The Vertical Hour Royal Court There’s no such thing as a great script idea. Ideas are equally good or bad, what counts is how they’re treated. Take the 1991 coup against Gorbachev. Pretty dramatic, momentous and gripping, I’d say. And here’s Penny Gold to dramatise it. She may well be a Russian analyst, an expert on the intricacies of revolutionary politics and a brilliant diviner of the male psyche but she’s decided to give those specialities a rest. Shunting the whole nasty business of the coup to one side, she focuses on the Gorbachev family cooped up in their Crimean dacha surrounded by KGB plotters.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Intelligence Squared debate report – “Britain should have a referendum on the EU Treaty”

Motion: Britain should have a referendum on the EU treaty. Chair: Andrew Neil   For the motion: Neil O’Brien Andrew Roberts Rt Hon Lord Lamont of Lerwick   Against the motion :  Sir Stephen Wall Vernon Bogdanor CBE David Aaronovitch.  It was like an eclipse. Wednesday’s debate on the EU referendum exactly coincided with a parliamentary vote on the same issue. ‘Over at the Palace of Varieties,’ prophesied Andrew Neil, in the chair, ‘the debate will be dull, predictable and whipped. But here at Intelligence Squared it’ll be lively, wild, and with no foregone conclusion.’ So it proved. This was the rowdiest debate of the season. At one point punches were almost exchanged.

Lloyd Evans

Intelligence2 debate report: should we bomb Iran?

Iran was in the cross hairs last Tuesday. At the Intelligence Squared debate the mellifluously worded motion, ‘It’s better to bomb Iran than risk Iran getting the bomb,’ was proposed by Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi, a distinguished Italian political scientist. He argued that letting Tehran acquire nukes would create turmoil in the Middle East — and beyond. The Persian Gulf and the Caspian Basin, which currently operate as a sort of all-night Texaco garage to the world’s economies, would fall under the spell of a dangerous anti-Western regime. If neighbouring Turkey went nuclear, proliferation might spread Greece-wards and even into the Balkans. Against the motion, Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran, applied three criteria to the military option.

Lloyd Evans

Dazed and confused

Tara Arts, a troupe devoted to ‘cross-cultural theatre’, are hauling their Tempest around the country. In a minivan by the look of things. The whole production — cast, cossies and props — could easily squeeze into a Bedford Rascal but, as Mark Rylance has already demonstrated, thrift and The Tempest don’t mix well. Rylance bored the Globe to a standstill doing this play with three actors. Tara sport six and it’s still not enough for the sprawling and fantastical storyline. You’ve got two sets of castaways on different bits of an atoll (three, if you include Prospero and Miranda) and a pair of magical sprites buzzing around like lost milk floats. Confusing enough if it’s your sixth view of The Tempest. Indecipherable if it’s your first.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Why it’s important

Lloyd Evans believes that Wilde’s comedy is the best play ever written. The Importance of Being Earnest with Penelope Keith is at the Vaudeville Theatre from 22 January. My favourite play is on its way to the West End and I fully expect to be disappointed. It’s not that Peter Gill’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest hasn’t been widely praised. It has. But I prefer to see the play done by amateurs because with the sheen of professionalism stripped away the brilliance of the script becomes all the more evident. The Importance has been called the best comedy ever written. I’d say it’s the best play ever written. Its structure is flawless.

Lloyd Evans

Old hat

La Cage aux Folles Menier Chocolate Factory The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer Arcola Angry Young Man Trafalgar Studio La Cage aux Folles is a musical based on a classic comedy by Jean Poiret. Terry Johnson’s new version is perfectly agreeable. Nice sets, charming actors and the audience loved it. So what’s wrong? Well, the threadbare storyline for a start: Georges has to persuade his gay partner Albin to absent himself from a dinner party because the guests will find their sexuality shocking. That’s it. Trouble is this dilemma feels at least three decades old and the characters — especially M. Renaud the homophobic conservative politician — seem as quaint and irrelevant as the unicorns and damsels sporting on a medieval tapestry.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Next stop, Lear

Much Ado About Nothing Olivier The Masque of the Red Death Battersea Arts Centre The Winter’s Tale Courtyard Theatre Simon Russell Beale is working through the complete works of Shakespeare like a Regency beau touring Italy. It’s mid-winter and he’s alighted in Messina to peruse the role of Benedick. With Russell Beale the question is not how well he’ll interpret a new role but how well the character suits his strengths — his warmth and intelligence, his sly donnish humour. Benedick is a good fit. Not perfect, perhaps. The dash and romantic energy aren’t quite there because Russell Beale is, shall we say, a little more settled in his ways than the part requires.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Beyond redemption

Absurd Person Singular, Garrick Women of Troy, Lyttelton Cinderella, Old Vic   Five years as a critic and I’ve never seen anything by Alan Ayckbourn. With a flicker of apprehension in my heart I took my seat at the Garrick. Absurd Person Singular (nice title, nothing to do with the play) begins at a bourgeois drinks party. Calamity unfolds. Wife forgets to buy tonic, dons mackintosh, exits into rain via back door, returns from off-licence, finds back door locked so must re-enter house via front door without being spotted by guests because rained-on mac looks silly. See her problem? Nor did I, but the comedy of the first act rests entirely on one’s ability to sympathise with this trifling dilemma.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Scholastic mystery

Doubt: A Parable is a small intriguing play set in a New York Catholic school. When a 12-year-old boy is caught getting smashed on altar wine, the fanatical head teacher, Sister Aloysius, starts to investigate. She’s convinced that the lad has been corrupted by a charismatic and handsome young priest Fr Flynn. Outraged, Fr Flynn claims that his closeness to the boy is innocent and that her groundless accusations have torn their friendship to pieces. This is a highly unusual play. Tedious and slow to start with, it consists of nothing but seated characters talking to each other.

Lloyd Evans

The Great Iraq Debate

Lloyd Evans, The Spectator’s theatre critic, reviews last night’s Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate on the future of Iraq which featured Tony Benn, William Shawcross, Sir Christopher Meyer, Ali Allawi, Rory Stewart and Lt Peter Hegseth. Full audio of the debate is available here. The Future of Iraq Speakers and motions Proposition 1 Go. ‘Allied forces should leave Iraq as soon as is practical’ Rt Hon Tony Benn Rory Stewart Proposition 2 Quid pro Quo. ‘A withdrawal of troops as part of a negotiated settlement on the future of Iraq’ Sir Christopher Meyer Dr Ali Allawi Proposition 3 Stay. ‘The Surge is working. Let’s win before we leave.’ William Shawcross Lt Peter Hegseth Led Zep, eat your heart out.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Bitter sweets

Happy Christmas, New End The Seagull; King Lear, New London A blast of seasonal cheer at the New End Theatre. Paul Birtill’s bitter and hilarious family satire, Happy Christmas, starts like a subversive salute to The Homecoming. Upwardly mobile John introduces his posh fiancée Mary to his dysfunctional all-male family. The script is crammed with offbeat gags. ‘Strange taxi-driver,’ giggles Mary as she enters; ‘do you really think his granddad was on the Titanic?’ She refuses to be cowed by John’s ghastly brothers. Kenny is a workshy alcoholic — ‘There’s an art to being on the dole’ — who immediately bums a tenner off her and later rifles through her purse.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Conquests and coffins

On Tuesday Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor take on Othello at the Donmar. If the show hasn’t sold out already, it soon will. Doubtless the starry cast will help shift a lot of tickets but so will the play’s peculiar ‘self-rationing’ effect. Of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, Othello is the least often revived. The play has always been particularly problematic, not because it’s bad — though in parts it is — but because it’s so outstandingly good. The final act is perhaps the finest piece of pure theatre ever written, a sublime blend of nail-biting suspense, heartbreaking pathos and triple-fortissimo lyrical effects.

Lloyd Evans

Lunatics at large

The Dysfunckshonalz!; Some Kind of Bliss; William Blake’s Divine Humanity The spirit of punk and its exhilarating lunacies are brilliantly captured in a new show at the Bush. Mike Packer’s affectionate satire tells the story of The Dysfunckshonalz, a major punk band of 1977, who 30 years on are approached by an American bank eager to use their best-known song to promote a new credit card. Bribed with a mountain of cash, the middle-aged stars fly to America to reprise their act. But at the debut gig their singer, Billy Abortion, reverts to his punk roots and sabotages the show by stabbing himself on stage and collapsing in a pool of blood yelling, ‘Three cheers for bin Laden.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

The Intelligence2 Debate

The motion: Britain Doesn’t Need Trident Harrowing stuff. Helena Kennedy QC began by invoking the memory of Hiroshima. ‘Peeling skin, melting eyeballs. People on pavements vomiting and waiting for death.’ Though she made the pacifist argument Lady Kennedy wasn’t suggesting that to scrap Trident was ‘some wild left-wing peacenik plan’. She cited conservative figures like Simon Jenkins and Lord Bramall, a former defence chief of staff, who both oppose renewing the nuclear deterrent. The opposition was led by Sir Michael Quinlan, former permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence. The lovable mandarin elaborated his urbane arguments in a rapid, fluting delivery.

Lloyd Evans

Musical misfit

Demand for new musicals has reached the point where investors are ready to sink funds into a whole new method of production — the we-can’t-write-a-musical-so-let’s-write-a-musical school of musicals. In the latest effort the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan has been crossbred with the songs of Blondie. A terrible ugliness is born. The songs don’t fit the film and the film doesn’t fit the theatre. Bored housewife, Roberta, mooches around New York looking for romantic kicks while her cold, philandering husband half-heartedly tries to find her. Feeble aims, ghastly people. Susan, the pivotal figure, is an attitude rather than a character, a random parasite whose gimme-all-you-got-and-get-lost outlook is hard to warm to.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Hopeless propaganda

The Arsonists, Royal Court; The Giant, Hampstead; The Bicycle, MenKing’s Head   Strange happenings in theatreland. Three London playhouses have taken it into their heads to mount a sustained attack on the avant garde. Result â” carnage! Careers are in tatters. Reputations have been shredded. Some of these playwrights will never be seen again. In August the Donmar cruelly demonstrated that N.F. Simpson was unworthy of adult attention by staging two of his silliest playlets alongside a slice of tedious cleverness by Michael Frayn. Last month the Royal Court embarrassed Ionesco by putting on his dated sci-fi fantasy, Rhinoceros. Next the Almeida started knocking lumps out of Caryl Churchill with a resuscitation of her 1970s dodo, Cloud Nine.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

The road to Auschwitz

Theatre: Lotte’s Journey, Cloud Nine, Joe Guy Beware of plays that open on trains trundling through Europe in the 1940s. You know where they’re heading. The strength of Candida Cave’s new work, Lotte’s Journey, is that it evades cliché by telling the passengers’ stories in reverse. In particular we focus on Charlotte Saloman, a brilliant Jewish artist haunted by the suicide of her mother and grandmother. The script is technically ambitious and takes us from Berlin to Rome and Nice, and covers Saloman’s life from the age of eight when her father explained the cause of her mother’s death as influenza. These large transitions are skilfully handled by Ninon Jerome’s direction.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Intelligence2 debate report

‘It’s about my cappuccino.’ No one expected the great environmental debate — Capitalism can save the Planet — to be reduced to mere refreshments, but Tim Harford, leading for the motion, used the coffee he buys outside his FT office as a symbol of the global challenge. Our survival depends on consumer decisions at every level of industrial production. Let capital decide, he said. Keep government out of it. Otherwise we’ll end up, as we do now, with excellent biofuels like Brazilian sugarcane being taxed at 25 per cent. Nigel Lawson, against the motion, made a subtle, thoughtful, somewhat donnish and completely captivating speech examining ‘the disconnect’ between politicians’ promises and their actual effect on climate change.

Lloyd Evans

Losing the plot

Theatre: The Country Wife, Haymarket; Rent, Duke of York’s A rarity at the Haymarket. A new production of a straight play. Such is the despair over the creeping musicalisation of the West End that this feels less like a review and more like a life-and-death prognosis on a stricken prince whose wellbeing has become an obsessive hobby among theatre critics and other intellectual pseuds. First the bad news. William Wycherley’s 332-year-old sex romp is about as entertaining as I would be if I were 332. The plot is dazzlingly crass. Horner, a self-adoring womaniser, returns home from a spell in France and spreads the rumour that he has lost his genitals.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Incapable of compromise

Big date for Bohemians next month: 28 November marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake whose memory is honoured by every moth-eaten visionary, every babbling poet and every garret-bound artist flinging paint at a canvas. Nowadays, Blake’s eminence is universally accepted but the great mystery of his career is that his achievements, as both illustrator and poet, made such a feeble impression on his contemporaries. It didn’t help that he was widely thought mad. And he complained throughout his life of a ‘Nervous Fear’ that made him uneasy in company. Because of his visions his behaviour was often weird.