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Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans

The Spectator

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The Traitors finale was a cruel spectacle

The Traitors finale was a cruel spectacle
saturday 5

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Theatre / Pious bilge: Kyoto, at @sohoplace, reviewed

Theatre /					 													 						Pious bilge: Kyoto, at @sohoplace, reviewed
23.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Pious bilge: Kyoto, at @sohoplace, reviewed

Pious bilge: Kyoto, at @sohoplace, reviewed
23.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

PMQs was a particularly dozy affair

PMQs was a particularly dozy affair
22.01.2025 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Cheerless and fussy: The Tempest, at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, reviewed

Cheerless and fussy: The Tempest, at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, reviewed
16.01.2025 8

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Keir can thank God for Kemi

Keir can thank God for Kemi
15.01.2025 1

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Exquisite: Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

Exquisite: Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed
09.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

The issue of rape gangs will not go away

The issue of rape gangs will not go away

Finally, we heard it. At PMQs today, the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, dropped the euphemism ‘grooming’ and said ‘rape gangs’ to describe the...

08.01.2025 4

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Theatre / Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

Theatre / Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

Lloyd Evans has narrated this article for you to listen to. The Last Days of Liz Truss? is a one-woman show about the brief interregnum between...

07.01.2025 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Theatre / Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

Theatre / Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

Lloyd Evans has narrated this article for you to listen to. The Last Days of Liz Truss? is a one-woman show about the brief interregnum between...

07.01.2025 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

The Last Days of Liz Truss? is a one-woman show about the brief interregnum between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. We first meet the future prime...

02.01.2025 6

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Theatre / Elton John’s The Devil Wears Prada is sumptuous but unmemorable

The Devil Wears Prada is a fairy tale about an aspiring female novelist, Andy, who receives a job offer from Runway, the nastiest and most...

27.12.2024 7

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Is Kemi Badenoch too nice to be Tory leader?

Kemi Badenoch got tough with Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. Not tough enough, but at least she led on a decent issue: old folks in distress. She...

18.12.2024 1

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Don’t blame this man for interrupting David Tennant

The curse of Macbeth strikes again. David Tennant’s turn as the Scottish psychopath was interrupted this week by a kerfuffle in the auditorium at...

12.12.2024 5

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Kemi Badenoch is bad at PMQs

Flunked it again, unfortunately. Kemi Badenoch chose poor tactics at PMQs. She made flabby speeches instead of hitting the PM with short, sharp...

11.12.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

This Muslim playwright believes Yorkshire is headed for civil war

Expendable, at the Royal Court, is an urgent bulletin from the front line of the grooming gang scandal in the north of England. The setting is a...

05.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Wonderful comedy of manners: Kiln Theatre’s The Purists reviewed

A slice of the ghetto arrives at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn. The Purists is set on the stoop of a crumbling block in Queens, New York, and the...

28.11.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Kemi Badenoch must get better at PMQs

Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the...

27.11.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

No life / The uncomfortable truth about boozing

‘Good for you. Amazing. I should do the same.’ ‘You must feel great. Lucky you.’ This is what I hear when I tell people I haven’t touched...

21.11.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Heart-warming but safe biographical drama: Going for Gold, at Park90, reviewed

Going for Gold is a biographical drama about a forgotten star of the 1970s. Frankie Lucas was a middleweight boxing champion, born on the Caribbean...

21.11.2024 1

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Angela Rayner has lost her edge

It was deputies’ day at PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer is busy flying around the world yet again. This time he’s trying to charm the unlucky leaders of...

20.11.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Making hay / Why the farmers’ protest probably won’t work

Cold drizzle falling on tweed. That was the abiding image of today’s protest in Westminster which filled Whitehall with tens of thousands of...

19.11.2024 20

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

A flop: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, at Ambassadors Theatre, reviewed

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button carries a strap-line, ‘an unordinary musical’. Perhaps the word ‘extraordinary’ is simply too banal to...

14.11.2024 6

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

PMQs has become as bland as a Bible study class

PMQs under Sir Keir’s premiership is less entertaining and volatile than before. Blame the landslide. A huge government majority fills the...

13.11.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

A riveting show crammed with the kind of risky gags rarely heard on stage these days

How To Survive Your Mother is a play based on a memoir by political dramatist Jonathan Maitland. He portrays himself in the show, and he muses on...

07.11.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Kemi’s PMQs debut left a lot to be desired

Slightly childish and she didn’t win. That’s how Kemi Badenoch fared during her first bust-up with Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. She began with a...

06.11.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Is Coogan’s Dr Strangelove as good as Sellars’s? Of course not

Stanley Kubrick’s surreal movie Dr Strangelove is a response to the fear of nuclear annihilation which obsessed every citizen in the western...

31.10.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Rachel Reeves sounded bored by her own Budget

The Tories lied! That was the thrust of Rachel Reeves’s first Budget today. She was very specific about the falsehoods. At the time of the spring...

30.10.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Revenge tragedy for kids: The Duchess [of Malfi], at Trafalgar Theatre, reviewed

The Duchess [of Malfi] has been partially updated by Zinnie Harris in a puzzling modern-dress production. The set by Tom Piper resembles a concrete...

24.10.2024 8

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Does anyone care about old people?

‘The battle of the gingers.’ That’s how Angela Rayner described her tussle with Oliver Dowden at deputy prime minister’s questions today. But...

23.10.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Almeida’s Look Back in Anger is flawless

Strange title, Juno and the Paycock. Sean O’Casey’s family drama is about a hard-pressed Dublin matriarch, Juno, whose husband Jack ‘the...

17.10.2024 5

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer is full of bilge

Who runs Britain’s foreign policy? Not the government, that’s clear. At PMQs, Sir Keir Starmer got a monumental roasting from Rishi Sunak whose...

16.10.2024 7

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

How is Arnold Wesker’s Roots, which resembles an Archers episode, considered a classic?

The Almeida wants to examine the ‘Angry Young Man’ phenomenon of the 1950s but the term ‘man’ seems to create difficulties so the phrase...

10.10.2024 1

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Rishi Sunak is the most effective opposition leader since Tony Blair

Rishi Sunak’s fleet-footed performance at Prime Minister’s Questions exposed many of Keir Starmer’s shortcomings as Prime Minister. Sunak is the...

09.10.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Reform’s new AI ad is dispiriting and strange

Digital modernity has reached the world of political campaigning. Reform’s new video is the first party political broadcast to use AI imagery and...

09.10.2024 1

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Language barrier / Inside the Welsh village where English speakers aren’t welcome

On a Saturday morning, no life stirs. The village café is closed and the ancient church of St Beuno’s is locked and deserted. Beside the stone...

04.10.2024 20

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Faultless visuals – shame about the play: the National’s Coriolanus reviewed

Weird play, Coriolanus. It’s like a playground fight that spills out into the street and has to be resolved by someone’s mum. The hero is a...

03.10.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

The show belongs to Jonathan Slinger and Ben Whishaw: Waiting for Godot reviewed

Waiting for Godot is a church service for suicidal unbelievers. Those who attend the rite on a regular basis find themselves wondering how boring...

26.09.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

A massive, joyous, sensational hit: Why Am I So Single? reviewed

Why Am I So Single? opens with two actors on stage impersonating the play’s writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. You may not recognise the names but...

19.09.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

The rise of soapy, dead-safe drama: The Band Back Together reviewed

The Band Back Together is a newish play, written and directed by Barney Norris, which succeeds wildly on its own terms. It delivers a low-energy...

12.09.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Has Keir Starmer forgotten that he’s prime minister?

Shortly before noon, Sir Keir Starmer and his closest chums peeped out from behind the Speaker’s chair to see if it was safe to enter the chamber....

11.09.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Nothing gives Keir Starmer joy like banning things

Power hasn’t altered Sir Keir Starmer. His frosty and unamused demeanour remains. No hint of warmth or joy has penetrated his defensive outer rind....

04.09.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

No life / How I lost my faith

God used to exist. He doesn’t any more, but back in the early 1970s he was a major presence in my life. The world at that time was run by...

29.08.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

The cast mistake screaming for comedy: Cockfosters, at Turbine Theatre, reviewed

The Turbine Theatre is a newish venue beneath the railway arches of Grosvenor Bridge in Battersea. The comfy auditorium is furnished with 94 cinema...

22.08.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

This Edinburgh Fringe comedian is headed for stardom

Dr Phil Hammond is a hilarious and wildly successful comedian whose career is built on the ruins of the NHS. His act has spawned a host of...

15.08.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

No life / Being mugged changes you forever

Being mugged changes you forever. My encounter with highwaymen occurred three decades ago in a south London street, in the early evening as I...

12.08.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Arts / Edinburgh has turned into a therapy session

Therapy seems to be the defining theme of this year’s Edinburgh festival. Many performers are saddled with personal demons or anxieties which...

08.08.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Does Wes Streeting know what he’s doing?

Wes Streeting bounds onto the stage for a conversation with Matthew Stadlen (deputising for Iain Dale) at the Edinburgh festival. Labour’s new...

06.08.2024 2

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Reinforces the caricatures it sets out to diminish: Slave Play, at the Noël Coward Theatre, reviewed

Slave Play is a series of hoaxes. The producers announced that ‘Black Out’ performances would be reserved for ‘black-identifying’ playgoers...

01.08.2024 3

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Shapeless and facile: The Hot Wing King, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed

Our subsidised theatres often import shows from the US without asking whether our theatrical tastes align with America’s. The latest arrival, The...

25.07.2024 1

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans