Theatre
Audience participation
Torben Betts is much admired by his near-namesake Quentin Letts for socking it to London trendies. Letts is one of…
State-funded twaddle
‘We hate the system and we want the system to pay us to say we hate the system.’ The oratorio…
Barometer
Watching brief Samsung warned users of its voice-activated televisions that what they said in front of the TV could be…
Friends reunited
New venue. New enticement. In the undercroft of a vast but disregarded Bloomsbury church nestles the Museum of Comedy. The…
All in the mind
Big event. A new play from Sir Tom. And he tackles one of philosophy’s oldest and crunchiest issues, which varsity…
It’s a knockout
A knockout show at the Young Vic. Literally. The stage has been reconfigured as a boxing ring to make Mike…
Balkans ballyhoo
A masterpiece at the National. A masterpiece of persuasion and bewitchment. Croatian word-athlete Tena Stivicic has miraculously convinced director Howard…
A London Christmas
I have been having my vault done over. Not, as you might think, the family strong room, but the place…
Sin city
When to launch? For impresarios, this is the eternal dilemma. Autumn is so crowded with press nights that producers are…
Slow burn
Go slow at Dagenham. The musical based on the film about a pay dispute in the 1960s starts as a…
It was a wonderful town
I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…
Mis-en-Mars
You have to hand it to the Russians. They beat us into space, beat us to sexual equality, and a…
Men behaving badly
Start with a joke. Neville’s Island. Get it? Laughing yet? Are your ribs splitting into pieces? It’s a cracker, isn’t…
East up West
David Baddiel has turned his movie, The Infidel, into a musical. The set-up is so contrived and clumsy that it…
Sister act
First, a bit of background. Conquering Agamemnon slew his daughter, Iphigenia, in return for a fair wind to Troy. This…
The Tim and Andy show
Tim and Andy are back. Their monster hit Evita opens the fully refurbed and re-primped Dominion Theatre, which is built…
Director’s cut
At the age of 75, the theatre director Michael Rudman has got around to his memoirs, their title taken from…
Bad bad acting
It’s taken a while but here it is. The Play That Goes Wrong is like Noises Off, but simpler. Michael…
Independence blues
Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after…
Dolts, doormats and FGM
Wow. What an experience. A 1991 movie named Dogfight has spawned a romantic musical. We’re in San Francisco in 1963.…
State of independence
Lloyd Evans tours the Edinburgh Festival in search of clues about the outcome of the referendum
Edinburgh round-up
Let’s start with a nightmare. Wendy Wason, an Edinburgh comedienne, travelled to LA last year accompanied by her husband, who…
You’re never too old, they say. But I am
For my 49th birthday treat, I went to see Shakespeare in Love at the Noël Coward theatre in London. Expensive…
Bare-faced lies
Lillian Hellman must be a maddening subject for a biographer. The author Mary McCarthy’s remark that ‘every word she writes…
Politics as Victorian melodrama
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
