Theatre
Sir Peter Hall (1930–2017) on Harold Pinter, actors and making love
Sir Peter Hall has died at the age of 86. He spoke to The Spectator in 2009: Even at 78 and…
Emma Rice was never as radical as she thought she was
Towards the end of Emma Rice’s recent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the mechanicals decides to give…
OUP and the Marlowe truthers are pandering to the lowest form of Shakespeare populism
Back in 2007, Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance delivered a petition, pompously titled ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’, to that august…
There’s nothing transgressive about opera using sex to sell tickets
Fluffy bunnies. Human-size, pink and white fluffy bunnies. Twerking. The image has never left me, ever since an ill-fated date…
Are theatre audiences getting out of hand?
Laurence Fox has this week joined an increasing band of actors hitting back at misbehaving audience members who seem to…
Fine producers who don’t employ disabled actors and actors will just learn how to fake disability
Jenny Sealey, director of Graeae Theatre Company, has had a brainwave. Fine producers who don’t employ disabled actors. She’s particularly…
This ‘new image of Shakespeare’ is obviously not Shakespeare – but I’ll tell you who it might be
In its issue dated 20 May, Country Life has published a long article by the botanical historian Mark Griffiths claiming…
Channel 4’s The Vote reviewed: ‘complex, acute, very funny and oddly moving’
He’s back on top form. James Graham has taken the unlikeliest setting, a polling station during the last hour of…
Wolf Hall gets an American makeover
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall documents the rise of Thomas Cromwell, one of history’s most famous anti-heroes. Chronicling Henry VIII’s ill-fated marriage to Anne Boleyn, it is…
Truth, Lies, Diana review: it was a cover-up!
Truth, Lies, Diana Charing Cross Theatre, in rep until 14 February John Conway’s sensationalist play, Truth, Lies, Diana, is a forensic…
Lloyd Evans’s top five plays and musicals of 2014
1. The play of the year, by a mile, was Fathers and Sons at the Donmar adapted from Turgenev’s novel.…
Don’t criticise Janet Suzman for saying theatre’s ‘a white invention’, thank her
Janet Suzman’s throwaway comment about the theatre being ‘a white invention’ has attracted a storm of opportunistic derision. What Dame…
Is theatre more left wing than other art forms? Yes – and so it should be
A couple of nights ago a question arose in our post-show discussion. It is a question I am familiar with.…
Spectator books of the year: Roger Lewis on hating Sheridan Morley
Sheridan Morley was an old enemy of mine, so I was thrilled to see him brilliantly denounced and called to…
The best of Frieze Art Fair was free
Frieze and its ever-multiplying layers – some fantastically rich, others disappointingly dry – has expanded into a millefeuille so dense that you…
Tom Cruise deserves our support and pity
These are your lives. Yard Theatre, until 4 October Tom Cruise. That’s the big offer from a newish venue, the…
3,000 masochists descend on Edinburgh
And they’re off. The mighty caravan of romantic desperadoes, radical egoists, stadium wannabes, struggling superstars and vanity crackheads is on…
If the Edinburgh Fringe thinks it’s fine to give in to bigots, I might have to give up on the Edinburgh Fringe
When is a great international arts festival not a great international arts festival? When it can’t uphold even the most basic…
Cultural boycotts are ineffective and wrong
Scotland’s national poet Liz Lochhead has been at it again. Two years ago she was petitioning against a dance company…
The Tories have little to fear from this latest luvvie attack on its policies
Zero-hours contracts: refuse to work with one, and you might lose your benefits. To the Left, it’s preeminent proof of…
The National Theatre could – and should – survive without state funding
Two glorious playhouses grace the south bank of the Thames. Shakespeare’s Globe and the National Theatre stage the finest shows…
A Waiting for Godot that’ll make you laugh as much as it’ll make you despair
I have to remind myself that Waiting for Godot is a confounding piece of theatre. It’s supposed to be. The…
‘When HBO want a gritty, hard-bitten, authentic American, they think: Old Etonian’
You don’t expect to find a slice of Eton College in deepest Dalston, but tonight a distinctly posh Waiting for…
The great Shakespeare authorship question
Was William Shakespeare just a nom de plume? The question is usually dismissed as boring, only of interest to snobs…
Monty Python’s dancing circus
For those who are worried that five men in their 70s might struggle to bring the kind of energy befitting…
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