Starmer knows that Boris is safe – for now
Calm returned to the bridge. Big Dog looked comfortable in the chamber as Sir Keir Starmer quizzed him at PMQs.…
Boom and bust
Moulin Rouge wins no marks for its storyline. A struggling Parisian theatre is bought out by an evil financier who…
Watching the detective
Producers are getting jittery again. Large-scale shows look risky when a single infection can postpone an entire show. Hence Poirot…
PMQs: Pantomime Starmer wasted his chance
Does Boris lie? Well, yes, of course, he’s a politician. That’s the standard response to the honesty question. And in…
Love letter to a titan
Hampstead Theatre has revived a play about Peggy Ramsay, the legendary West End agent who shaped the careers of Joe…
Why Boris might still survive
Haunted. Ashen. Defeated. That’s how the PM looked in parliament this afternoon as he faced the flamethrowers of the opposition.…
His thuggish materials
Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust has been adapted at the Bridge. The yarn is set in Oxford, and the…
Jacinda Ardern to Alastair Campbell: My 2021 ‘naughty list’
Merry Christmas – but not for those who have earned a place on my naughty list. From Jacinda Ardern to…
Grand Dame
Jack and the Beanstalk is a big, sprawling family show that opens with a baffling gesture. A booming voiceover announces…
New arrivals
What happens to Afghan migrants when they reach the UK?
Unbowed Boris has put his Tory rivals in their places
Boris was resurgent at PMQs today. He sprinkled scorn, merriment and mischief in all directions. He even boasted that last…
Tiger feat
Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is a complicated organism. The action starts in southern India where we meet a…
PMQs: Boris’s nadir
The bombshell at bay. That’s how Boris looked at today’s PMQs. Deflated, cornered, winded and lifeless. Gone were the chuckles…
The National is the graveyard of talent
Somewhere in the wilds of England a stately home is collapsing. Rising floodwaters threaten the foundations. Storms break over the…
Donald Trump understands how Prince Harry’s mind works
Last night Nigel Farage delivered the shortest hour-long interview in TV history. GB News had cleared 60 minutes of the…
Guilt-free hilarity
World-class sex bomb Janie Dee stars in a fabulously silly revival of the American comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha…
The Guinea Pig club
Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery
In a class of its own
Mike Leigh’s classic, Abigail’s Party, has been revived under the direction of Vivienne Garnett. The script is a guilty secret…
Screwball Austen
Let’s be honest. Jane Austen is popular because War and Peace doesn’t fit inside a handbag. Austen’s best-loved novel, Pride…
On tap
Why pub theatres are thriving
A call to arms
’night, Mother is a two-hander that opens like a comedy sketch. ‘I’m going to kill myself, Mama,’ says Jessie. She’s…
How to stop another Grenfell
Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry is a gripping, horrifying drama. Nicolas Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor have sifted through the public…
Would the real Rishi Sunak please stand up?
It was a tale of two chancellors at today’s high-spending Budget. Rishi Sunak began by embracing the big-state profligacy pursued…
Too much bawl and shriek
Yaël Farber’s Macbeth sets out to be a great work of art. The director crams the Almeida’s stage with suggestive…
Simply Shakespeare
Here goes. The Young Vic’s Hamlet, directed by Greg Hersov, is a triumph. This is a pared-back, plain-speaking version done…
