Cobweb-thin
Hats off to the Lawrence Batley Theatre for producing a brand-new full-length show on-line. Stephen Fry, with avuncular fruitiness, narrates…
Macbeth at the movies
The world’s greatest playwright ought to be dynamite at the movies. But it’s notoriously hard to turn a profit from…
Keir Starmer’s big weakness was exposed at PMQs
It has come down to a classroom contest. The swot versus the wag. The smart Alec against the rugger captain.…
Pinch and a punch
The National’s bizarre livestreaming service continues. On 7 May, for one week only, it released a modern-dress version of Antony…
Withdrawal symptoms
A TV play by Tom Stoppard, A Separate Peace, was broadcast live on Zoom last Saturday. I watched as my…
No q for the toilet
‘Enjoy world-class theatre online for free,’ announces the National Theatre. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. a play from the archive…
Turns of the century
Not looking great, is it? Until we all get jabbed, theatres may have to stay closed. And even the optimists…
Within these walls
High Tide got there first. The East Anglian theatre company has produced a series of lockdown mini-dramas, Love in the…
Separation anxiety
Theatres have taken to the internet like never before. Recorded performances are being made available over the web, many for…
Rules of engagement
With theatres shut, radio must lighten the darkness. The Guilty Feminist is a wildly popular podcast performed by Deborah Frances-White…
Closing time
War and plague have menaced theatres before, but rarely on this scale, says Lloyd Evans
The inside story
On Blueberry Hill sounds like a musical but it’s a sombre prison drama set in Ireland. Two bunkbeds. Above, an…
The two gentlemen of corona
Boris Johnson’s medical wingmen
Secrets and spies
Here’s the problem. Much communication is done online, especially by youngsters, and much drama focuses on communication. So how do…
Pyramid of piffle
The Prince of Egypt is a musical adapted from a 1998 Dreamworks cartoon based on the Book of Exodus. So…
Changing the bard
A Moorish princess shipwrecked on the English coast disguises herself as a boy to protect her virtue. Arriving in London,…
Beckett would approve
An office worker stands on the ledge of an open window about to leap. Two colleagues enter, ignoring him completely.…
Family matters
History will record Leopoldstadt as Tom Stoppard’s Schindler’s List. His brilliant tragic-comic play opens in the Jewish quarter of Vienna…
On the bias
The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah,…
‘We will never return, there is no going back’: the Brexit Day party, as it happened
Remainers were there too. The first people I met at the Brexit Day festivities were opposed to the whole idea.…
Doing Chekhov by halves
Uncle Vanya opens with a puzzle. Is the action set in the early 20th century or right now? The furnishings…
Upstairs downstairs
Falling In Love Again features two of the 20th century’s best-known sex athletes. Ron Elisha’s drama covers a long drunken……
People expecting punishment won’t be disappointed: Almeida’s Duchess of Malfi reviewed
The Duchess of Malfi is one of those classics that everyone knows by name but not many have witnessed on…
Redneck twaddle: Young Vic’s Fairview reviewed
Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury won last year’s Pulitzer Prize. It deserves additional awards for promoting racial disharmony and entrenching…
Lily Allen to Newsnight: The 41 most annoying things in 2019
Lily Allen. Lights! Camera! Hanky! It’s been a vintage year for Twitter’s comedy genius. The needy pub-bore grumblings of Tony…
