Theatre
London notebook
In London for the first time in 18 months, I was as excited as a child on a birthday outing.…
Screech, howl, yelp, crash
The new Lily Allen vehicle opens in a spruced-up terrace in the East End. Allen plays a self-satisfied yuppie, Jenny,…
What a farce
Lloyd Evans talks to Nigel Planer about the death of comedy theatre — and how he’s trying to revive it
Homeric levels of misery
The National Theatre has given Sophocles’s Philoctetes a makeover and a new title, Paradise. This must be ironic because the…
Still life
Lloyd Evans finds the newly returned Edinburgh Fringe quieter, more low-key — and all the better for it
Actor
‘That chap in Line of Duty. That’s what I’d call a bad actor,’ said my husband with vague certainty. He…
Frankly terrific
Sinatra: Raw (Pleasance, until 15 August) takes us inside the mind of the 20th century’s greatest crooner. The performer, Richard…
Theatrical opium
Ian McKellen in his early eighties plays the Dane in his mid-twenties. A production with such a strange innovation should…
West End pearl
The newly renovated Theatre Royal Drury Lane has seen it all and staged it all, says Robert Gore-Langton
High-minded vs heartbreaking
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
Escapist comedy at its very best
Lady Sylvia is a gorgeous aristocrat whose hand is sought by the charming Dorante whom she has never met. To…
It’s who you know
All the world’s on stage again so where to go to for insight into what to see and why? Podcasts,…
Tasteless muddle
What shall we destroy next? Romeo & Julietseems a promising target and the Globe has set out to vandalise Shakespeare’s…
Shawn again
Pity the aesthete, the flâneur and the opera-goer. Those who find the contents of their own heads so dull and…
Stage fright
Uncertainty is crippling our cultural life
Diary
It turns out that if there’s one thing more expensive than making theatre, it’s not making it. Empty buildings haemorrhage…
This will hurt
Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff…
Who goes there?
Death of a Black Man is a little-known script from the 1970s written by Alfred Fagon who suffered a fatal…
Divine comedy
Godot Is a Woman opens with three tramps standing on a bare stage beneath a solitary upright. This isn’t Samuel…
Kitsch tomfoolery
The latest movie to turn into a musical is Amélie, from 2001, about a Parisian do-gooder or ‘godmother of the…
Where is my mind?
The Father is an immensely powerful film about dementia starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, who was asleep in his bed in…
Two sides of the Storey
Jasper Rees remembers David Storey, giant of postwar English culture and wry teller of tales, whose newly published memoir is perhaps his most remarkable work
Colour and confusion
Back to the Globe after more than a year. The theatre has zealously maintained its pre–Covid staffing levels. On press…
The arrival of Godot
A Russian Doll is a monologue about Putin’s campaign to swing the Brexit vote in his favour. It stars Rachel…
Zoom’s last hurrah
Lockdown is about to end but some theatres are gripped by cabin fever and want to explore the two new…
