Lloyd Evans | The Spectator columnists & writers

Rebecca Humphries is dynamite – pity about the play: Blackout Songs, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

Viewers watching a good romcom need to fall in love with three things. The boy, the girl and the affair itself. The new Hampstead melodrama, Blackout Songs, scores just one out of three. Rebecca Humphries is adorably chic and sexy as the Soho seductress who drifts from bar to bar, picking up men. Her toyboy is a disappointment, a teenage deadbeat who has none of her louche gusto. And his character is a puzzle when it ought to be crystal clear. At the start of the action he wears a neck-brace and speaks with a stammer. In the next scene, his neck has healed and his stammer has vanished as well. Is he two characters? Or is he a con man who assumes different personalities, and if so why? He dresses in a paint-spattered tracksuit but he claims to be a welder, a rock star and a fine artist.

Matt Hancock: Star of the ‘I’m a Celeb’ jungle

Has Matt Hancock gone mad? Maybe not. His appearance in ‘I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here’ is part of a career move that could work well. Converting notoriety into fame pays dividends. Look at Ed Balls and Michael Portillo. Political failures, but they discovered gold on TV. A lot of observers loathe Hancock precisely because his plan may prosper. The balding Tarzan arrived in the jungle later than most of the celebs. And he was welcomed with a show of warmth and friendliness by his fellow castaways. Smiles and happy greetings all round. Someone called out ‘next slide please!’ and Hancock duly repeated his famous slogan. He knows the game. A precedent has been set by the ex-Speaker, John Bercow, who earns fees on the lecture circuit by shouting, ‘order, order’ to crowds of paying punters.

The UK Drill Project, at The Pit, reviewed

The UK Drill Project is a cabaret show that celebrates greed, criminality and drug-taking among black males in London. It opens with a septet of masked performers, sheathed in dark Lycra, singing a rhythmic poem while pretending to fire guns and stab people with knives. These sad young rappers are desperate to look scary because they’re scared themselves. And though they claim to be artists, their purpose in writing ‘drill’ songs and posting videos online is to protect their drug profits and to intimidate rival gangs. Musically, they lack accomplishment. They can’t play instruments and appear to own none. Harmony and melody are alien to them. One of the rappers successfully coaxes a beat from an orange drum that looks like an oversize basketball but this is a rather modest achievement.

Who will be next week’s ministerial exit?

For the past fortnight, it was Suella Braverman. Now it’s Sir Gavin Williamson. The media aims to destroy two careers a month, on average, and the present quest to topple Sir Gavin has already produced a result. He’s gone.But that’s not enough. It never is. The new clamour is for the nasty knight to be stripped of his title and reduced to plain old Mr Williamson. At PMQs, the resignation was problematic for Sir Keir because he had to argue over a dead parrot. He quoted Sir Gavin’s unhelpful suggestion to a colleague that he should ‘slit his own throat.’ It might have served Sir Keir better to conceal the phrase and to describe it as too shocking and violent to bear repetition. Once he’d quoted the words, his attack lost oomph.

The National Theatre deserves to have its budget cut

The arts cuts have arrived. The biggest loser is English National Opera whose annual award of £12.6 million will be replaced by a grant of £17 million, over three years, to cover the costs of a move from London to a regional centre, probably Manchester. ENO boss Stuart Murphy has complained that it’s unfair to confiscate money from a company that admits under-21s for free. But while it’s kind of him to give unsold seats to youngsters, it probably doesn’t justify an annual award of millions. In theatreland the prestigious Donmar Warehouse has lost every penny of its subsidy. And the National Theatre is to forfeit £850,000 but retains the bulk of its annual budget which stood at £17 million in 2020-21. These reductions are being spun as a ‘levelling up’ measure that will shift cash from pampered London to the poor and neglected provinces.

The dialogue ripples with energy: King Hamlin, at the Park Theatre, reviewed

King Hamlin is a shock-horror drama about gang crime in London. Hamlin, aged 17, has left school without learning any useful facts or skills. He even lacks a shirt to wear so he shows up for a job interview looking like a vagrant and starts to swear at his future boss. No work for him. He dreams of studying computer software but he doesn’t own a laptop and seems incapable of getting one. His life is devoid of functioning adults. There’s no teacher, relative, or competent older friend to advise him. No father, of course. His poor dad was knifed to death because he was ‘too good for the hood’. Which is a new cause of crime in London. An excess of virtue can get you stabbed, it seems. His clueless mother, aged 34, is a fantasist who plans to make a fortune selling lavender sprigs in flowerpots.

PMQs: Starmer’s astonishing Nigel Farage imitation

The small boats have landed. PMQs was dominated by the migration issue and the flotillas of dinghies struggling across the channel each day. So far this year over 40,000 doughty oarsmen have braved the seas in inflatable rafts. And they’re not just desperate to flee France with its rude waiters, pretentious language and over-complicated cheese menus. There’s another motive. We were about to hear it in plain language from the despatch box. Sir Keir started it. At first he merely sought to destabilise Suella Braverman and reinforce the clamour for her removal. ‘The Home secretary says our asylum system is broken. Who broke it?’ he asked. Rishi Sunak, usually lightening-quick, paused for a second.‘Let’s look at the record on immigration,’ he said.

Kids will enjoy this new show at the West End’s newest theatre more than adults: Marvellous, @sohoplace, reviewed

London has a brand-new theatre – yet again. Last summer, a cabaret venue opened in the Haymarket for the first time. More recently, the Marylebone Theatre near Regent’s Park held its debut show. And now Nica Burns of Nimax Theatres has announced a new venture, @sohoplace, which she says is the first West End venue to open for 50 years. The playing area is a hoop-shaped enclosure with rising tiers of seats overlooking a deep oblong pit. Cage fighting and mud-wrestling could be staged here to great advantage. The poster for the debut show, MARVELLOUS, features the title in bright pastel letters with a yellow balloon, a pair of clown’s shoes and a perky budgerigar. The image suggests a heart-warming children’s comedy or a feelgood high-school musical.

How long before Rishi fatigue sets in?

The gripping spectacle of Truss’s fight for survival

A week of sheer hell for the Tory leader. Plots and rumours have swirled around Westminster. Rebels are said to be roaming the corridors and gathering support for an anti-Liz putsch. And yet she’s still here. Our death-row Prime Minister strode into the chamber apparently dressed for her own funeral. Black trouser suit, white cotton blouse. She got into trouble as soon as she opened her mouth. Her ritual answer, ‘I will be meeting ministerial colleagues and others’ brought howls of laughter from the Labour benches. Sir Keir Starmer stood up to deliver a brief and fatal inquisition. He began with a pun about a book covering her career which will be ‘out by Christmas’. But, he wondered, will ‘out by Christmas’ be the title or the release date? The gag crashed because it’s too carefully prepared.

Mirthless, artless farrago of jabber: The Doctor, at Duke of York’s, reviewed

The Doctor is an acclaimed drama from the pen of writer-director Robert Icke. We’re in a hospital run by a famous medic, Dr Ruth, whom the Cockney characters call ‘Dr Roof’. Two major problems beset Dr Roof who has to raise funds for a new private wing while grappling with her partner’s early-onset dementia. A Catholic priest barges in and demands to visit a dying patient. Dr Roof refuses. Then she punches him in the face to prove who’s boss. Her ill-advised left hook plunges the hospital into crisis, and the senior staff gather in the boardroom to sort out the mess created by Dr Roof’s violent temper. All the doctors wear white coats, like pantomime boffins, which seems an unlikely costume nowadays. And it’s hard to tell if this is a real or a fictional clinic.

Liz Truss’s epic blandness

Is Liz Truss a real grown-up?

Tough call today for Liz Truss. She had to relaunch her premiership at her very first conference as leader. She walked on stage to the sound of the disco hit Moving On Up and for a horrific moment it looked as if she might do the Maybot dance. Luckily she remained still. To greet the applauding Tories she wore a smirk that seemed curiously poised between self-doubt and self-love. ‘I quite can’t believe I’m here – but I’m fabulous anyway.’ She'd chosen a stylish frock of mud-brown and sported the notorious necklace – with a zero dangling from its gold rivets – which is said to reflect her chances of winning a general election. She got into the personal stuff straight away. Oppression was integral to her childhood, she told us.

A masterpiece: Rose, at Park Theatre, reviewed

Look at this line. ‘I’m 80 years old. I find that unforgivable.’ Could an actor get a laugh on ‘unforgivable’? Maureen Lipman does just that in Rose, by Martin Sherman, a monologue spoken by a Ukrainian Jew who lived through the horrors of the 20th century. In the opening sections, Lipman plays it like a professional comic and she fills the theatre with warm, loving laughter. Rose’s dad is a hypochondriac who spends all day in bed. ‘He never stopped dying but as far as we could tell there was nothing wrong with him.’ Eventually he loses his life when a wardrobe stuffed with pills topples on to him. ‘He was crushed to death by medicine.’ As a teenager, Rose witnesses a raid by Cossack horsemen but their savagery is relatively benign.

For the state funeral mourners, the endurance is part of the ritual

The queue snakes for miles along the South Bank. Thousands of ordinary people are giving up hours of their time to spend a moment with the Queen’s coffin as it lies in state. Few mourners are dressed up. One or two wear suits and black ties. Some carry flowers. There’s the odd veteran with his polished medals on display. Mostly they’re the type of people you’d see outside a Waitrose car park in a market town. No one jumps the queue, which would be easy to accomplish, but that’s not the point. A public display of endurance is part of the ritual. Victoria Street is closed to traffic. Opposite the entrance to Westminster Abbey a huge platform is being built to give TV cameras a clear view of the cortege when it arrives on Monday.

Why is the BBC using Paddington to remember Her Majesty?

Here comes Paddington – again. Earlier this year, to celebrate her platinum jubilee, the Queen agreed to be filmed taking tea with Paddington in a sketch whose final punchline was a joke about marmalade sandwiches. Her Majesty told the bear she always carries one in her handbag, just in case. On film she was excellent, unshowy, watchable but not predictable, with an obvious knack for comedy. The short film was doubtless inspired by the Queen’s acclaimed performance alongside Daniel Craig, as James Bond, during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. But there’s a big difference between a British spy and a Peruvian bear. For Bond to meet the Queen was a witty conflation of fiction and reality. It seemed natural for 007 to appear at Buckingham Palace because he bears the rank of Commander in the royal navy and he serves the crown with faith and courage.

A tremendous show that will attract serious attention from the West End: Rehab – The Musical reviewed

Rhapsodic banalities: I, Joan, at the Globe, reviewed

‘Trans people are sacred. We are divine.’ The first line of I, Joan at the Globe establishes the tone of the play as a public rally for non-binary folk. The writer, Charlie Josephine, seems wary of bringing divinity into the story too much, and he gives Joan a get-out clause to appease the agnostics. ‘Setting aside religiosity we’ll settle for more of a street god, a god for the queers and drunks… a god for the godless.’ What can ‘a god for the godless’ mean? No idea. Joan throws in a few more hipster platitudes about ‘elevating our humanity, finding the unity hidden inside community, remembering our collective connectivity fuels courageous creativity [sic]’. At press night these rhapsodic banalities were cheered so aggressively that one feared the consequences of not joining in, or of not honking loudly enough.

Liz Truss’s first PMQs felt like a dress rehearsal

That felt like a dress rehearsal. Liz Truss sailed through her first PMQs which will probably be her easiest. It may turn out to have been her best. When she arrived, the House burst into ecstasies of joy as if she’d just found the cure for malaria, solved the Jack the Ripper case and liberated Hong Kong. The questions lobbed at her were as soft as pizza dough, and each was prefixed with a note of congratulation and welcome. The mood was warm enough even to thaw the frost that covers Theresa May. Suspending her sulk for a moment she made an ironic observation. ‘Why does she think it is that all three female prime ministers have been Conservative?’ Liz improvised. ‘There doesn’t seem to be the ability in the Labour party to find a female leader.

Our prison culture is more barbaric than it was in 1823: Elizabeth Fry ‘The Angel of Prisons’ reviewed

The Angel of Prisons dramatises the life of the penal reformer Elizabeth Fry, who lived near Canning Town. She married a wealthy Quaker, Joseph Fry, who encouraged her philanthropic work which she managed to pursue while raising 12 children. Early in life, Fry had been a party girl who loved dancing, and this production shows her practising her moves to a soundtrack of thumping contemporary music. The script, by James Kenworth, blends present-day London vernacular with the dialect of the early 19th century. It’s easy to watch and it delivers heaps of information without any hint of lecture-hall formality. When Fry visited the mixed-gender Newgate Prison near the Old Bailey she found her vocation. In those days, lawlessness was considered a heritable quality and the prison system was treated as a landfill site where criminals could be dumped for good.

The show works a treat: Globe’s The Tempest reviewed

Southwark Playhouse has a reputation for small musicals with big ambitions. Tasting Notes is set in a wine bar run by a reckless entrepreneur, LJ, whose business bears her name. In real life, LJ’s bar would go bust within weeks. It serves vintage wines to a clientele of wealthy tipplers who chug back large tureens of Malbec and claret but who eat no food. The staff help themselves to free champers and Burgundy whenever they choose, and the boss fusses around like a mother hen making sure her brood are safe and content. Bad punctuality is never punished and the staff improvise each shift as they go along. But the emotional atmosphere of LJ’s feels right. It’s a substitute family for the drifters and dreamers who work there, and the customers are treated as pals rather than clients.

A four-way race between poet, actor, video artist and sound engineer: Edinburgh Festival’s Burn reviewed

In a new hour-long monologue, Burn, Alan Cumming examines the life and work of Robert Burns. The biographical material is drawn from Burns’s letters, and the poems are read out in snatches. You won’t learn much except that Burns was a poor farmer who later worked as a taxman. To represent his many flings with women, a few high-heeled shoes are dangled on strings above the stage but this looks strangely cheap given that huge sums have been lavished on graphic imagery projected onto a big screen at the rear. Flashing lights and surges of music add to the sense of distraction. Cumming’s performance centres on dance, which looks like a new departure for him. His comic presence, his adroit wit and his impish, teasing face are world-class gifts but this show downplays his strengths.

The Dane gets an interpretive dance makeover: Ian McKellan’s Hamlet reviewed

Ian McKellen’s Hamlet is the highlight of Edinburgh’s opening week. In this experimental ballet, Sir Ian speaks roughly 5 per cent of the lines, accompanied by a hunky blond dancer, Johan Christensen, who offers a physical interpretation of the Dane’s melancholy. The other roles are played by a ballet troupe in olde worlde costumes. The performing area is a black thrust stage, gleaming like patent leather, surrounded by low spotlights and swirling dry ice. It looks like Elsinore recreated by a cruise-ship designer. Newcomers will find the story mystifying. Hamlet smoulders longingly at Horatio and they dance like a hot couple at a gay night spot. The middle-aged Laertes seems to be the boss or perhaps the father of Ophelia who appears to be sharing a flat with a youthful Polonius.

I can’t recommend this Cole Porter musical highly enough: Anything Goes, at the Barbican, reviewed

The Barbican’s big summer show is billed on the website as ‘the sold-out musical sensation, Anything Goes’. The term ‘sold-out’ is a strange way to describe a production that’s keen to get your business. You’d be forgiven for clicking away and hunting for a show with seats available. What the Barbican means is that this is a revival of an earlier production that did great business. And that may explain why tickets aplenty are available even on a busy Friday night. This version stars Kerry Ellis as the showgirl, Reno, who falls in love on a transatlantic cruise ship. Virtually every number is a classic. If you read any couplet from the title song you’ll be humming the melody all day. ‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking/ Was looked on as something shocking/ But now God knows …’ Cole Porter was one of the few composers who wrote the lyrics and the music for his shows, and he enjoyed mocking his rivals Rodgers and Hammerstein: ‘It takes two people to write a musical?’ Several hands contributed to the book, including P.

Stupendously good: Much Ado About Nothing, at the Lyttelton Theatre, reviewed

Simon Godwin’s Much Ado About Nothing is set in a steamy Italian holiday resort, the Hotel Messina, in the 1920s. A smart move, design-wise. The jazz age was one of those rare moments in history when every member of society, from the lowliest chambermaid to the richest aristocrat, dressed with impeccable style and flair. The show is stupendously good to look at it and it kicks off with a thrilling blast of rumba music from a jazz quartet on the hotel balcony. Even sceptics of jazz need not fear these players. The musical score is a triumph for one simple reason: there are no jazz solos. The comic passages of the play are performed imaginatively enough although some of the stunts – the collapsing hammock and the dodgy ice-cream trolley – become a bit repetitive.

An entertaining display, clearly destined for Netflix: Patriots, at Almeida Theatre, reviewed

Patriots, by Peter Morgan, is a drama documentary about recent Russian history. And though it’s a topical show it’s not entirely up to date. The central character, Boris Berezovsky (1946-2013), was a schoolboy maths wizard who went into academia and published 16 books before entering politics. His Jewish background excluded him from the leadership of Russia so he became king-maker to Boris Yeltsin. An early contact, the deputy mayor of St Petersburg, asked for Berezovsky’s help. The rising youngster seemed to be harmless, malleable, and rather needy so Berezovsky installed him as a tame prime minister. Thus Vladimir Putin’s career began. Berezovsky owned a TV station that criticised the handling of the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000.

The unedifying spectacle of Boris’s last PMQs

Today Boris gave his last performance at Prime Minister’s Questions. But was it his last? He left the House hanging at the end. Speaker Hoyle began the historic session with a soggy little homily praising Boris for seeing us through ‘dark times during the pandemic’. Then, laughably, he told MPs to adopt a ‘respectful manner’ and to stick to ‘issues not personalities’. And he wasn’t finished there. He quoted Erskine May’s advice that ‘good temper and moderation’ are the hallmark of a distinguished parliamentarian. Do we really need this micromanager filing the chamber with his lugubrious dronings? Hoyle sounds like a control-freak park keeper who deflates the bouncy castle ‘due to excessive sunshine.’ His ruling was instantly defied by Kim Leadbeater who questioned Boris’s integrity and accused him of driving public trust to an all-time low.

The real winner from last night’s debate

Last night Channel 4 held a 90-minute live event starring Rishi, Liz, Tom, Penny and Kemi. Not a manufactured pop-band but the candidates for the Tory leadership. The first question was easy-peasy. ‘Is Boris Johnson honest?’ ‘No,’ the obvious answer, was beyond them. They ducked and weaved and dodged and fudged. Except for Tom Tugendhat. ‘Honest?’ He bowed his head and shook it gravely. Massive applause. Major Tom is known as a bit of a heartthrob among ladies of a certain age (over 90) and his manner is to bark out terse and meaningless soundbites, parade-ground style. ‘Clean break!... Ready to lead!… Government only works when it works for you!… Fresh start!... Ready to serve!’ At one point he yelped that he has a ‘clean face!’ Great.

Hytner hits the bull’s eye: The Southbury Child, at the Bridge Theatre, reviewed

The Southbury Child is a comedy drama set in east Devon featuring a distressed vicar, Fr David, with a complex addiction history. Alex Jennings stars with his habitual urbane charm. Is there perhaps a credibility gap there? Jennings seems far too decent, clever and friendly to be a problem drinker who likes nothing better than a fling with a randy wench. And, more crucially, he doesn’t face the fallout from his days of boozing and bedhopping. His dramatic task is unconnected to his personal flaws. A little girl has died in controversial circumstances and her parents want balloons at her funeral. No way, says the vicar. The family fight back. Civil war erupts and Fr David faces dismissal while his newly appointed curate, a gay hunk from Glasgow, tries to take over the parish.

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