Spirit worlds
The Fabulist Fox Sister is a one-man show about the three American women who are credited with inventing the trade…
Into the jaws of hell
Southwark Playhouse is beating the latest lockdown with a zingy new musical about social media. The performers, Francesca Forristal and…
No thesps required
Flight has been hailed as a new form of dramatic presentation — prefab theatre. It’s great to look at. A…
Minimalist’s dream
Love Letters by A.R. Gurney began life as an epistolary novella about two childhood friends, Andy and Melissa, whose on-off…
All in the worst possible taste
Potted Panto is a 70-minute parody presented by two burlesque comedians. Jeff is a tall, playful bungler and his colleague,…
Slow off the Marc
The Flying Lovers of Vitebskbegins with a phone conversation between a pretentious art critic and a man called Marc. This…
Victorian values
Blackeyed Theatre is another victim of the virus. Its production of Jane Eyrewas midway through a UK tour, and due…
Lloyd Evans
Sasha is angry. He’s a gay artist on his way to his niece’s birthday party and he keeps popping codeine…
Return to gender
Emilia is a period piece about Emilia Bassano who may have been the ‘dark lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The writer,…
Thank god for lockdown
Death of England: Delroy is a companion piece to Death of England, which ran in February at the NT and…
An ego the size of Botswana
It’s touch and go whether the theatre will survive this latest assault. Some venues have pushed back their entire programme…
Cream of the crop
Theatres can open if they want to. That’s the current position. The only factor keeping a playhouse dark is a…
Cannibalism meets feminism
In Bad Taste is a slapstick comedy about five female terrorists who murder the governor of the Bank of England.…
A conspiracy against art
Southwark Playhouse has revived an American show, The Last Five Years, whose run was cancelled in March. In advance, I…
Sins of the fathers, music of the sons
When Kwame Kwei-Armah took over the Young Vic he strapped a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign over the front of the…
Life and fate
The season of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads continues at the Bridge. In The Hand of God we meet Celia, a…
Inside the anti-lockdown rally
The anti-lockdown rally at Trafalgar Square was organised by Save Our Rights UK. This embryonic organisation is so new that…
Five-star blarney
The Old Vic refuses to reopen. Director Matthew Warchus says the social distancing rules make it impossible for him to…
Marshal law
Covid marshals have invaded theatreland. Arriving for a weekday matinee at the Bridge, I was greeted by stewards holding up…
What I learnt as an Oxford vaccine guinea pig
Was the Oxford vaccine trial paused? Mine wasn’t. I signed up for it last week, in the 55 to 69-year-old…
Wet wet wet
It has roughly the same proportions as Shakespeare’s Globe. The Roman Theatre in Verulamium (St Albans) is an atmospheric ruin…
National review
Why does the state fund theatres and not gardening and bingo, asks Lloyd Evans
‘It’s not a crime to understand science’: Behind the scenes at Extinction Rebellion
There was plastic aplenty at today’s Extinction Rebellion rally in Parliament Square. Plastic shoes, plastic badges, plastic sunglasses, plastic phone covers. A…
Mum’s the word
The virus has broken Edinburgh. The shattered remnants of the festival are visible on the internet. Here’s what happened. The…
How No. 10 outsmarted Alastair Campbell
LBC broadcaster Iain Dale has moved his Edinburgh Festival ‘All Talk’ series to Zoom, and yesterday he spoke to Alastair…
