Lloyd Evans

Enjoyable but over-rated and elitist: Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls reviewed

13 April 2019 9:00 am

Caryl Churchill’s best-known play, Top Girls, owes a large debt to 1970s TV comedy. It opens with a Pythonesque dinner…

Star quality: Jade Anouka, right, as Bea in Ella Road’s The Phlebotomist

An exceptional dystopia that’s made for TV: The Phlebotomist reviewed

6 April 2019 9:00 am

The Phlebotomist by Ella Road explores the future of genetics. Suppose a simple blood test were able to tell us…

Francis Guinan (Fred) and K. Todd Freeman (Dee) in Downstate. Photo: Michael Brosilow

Has Bruce Norris bitten off more than he can chew?

30 March 2019 9:00 am

Bruce Norris is a firefighter among dramatists. He runs towards danger while others sprint in the other direction. His Pulitzer-winning…

Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Photo: Marc Brenner

Watch Tom Hiddleston ruin Pinter’s finest play

23 March 2019 9:00 am

No menace, no Venice. This new production of Pinter’s Betrayal is set on a bare stage with scant regard for…

Slow-moving tale with a strong echo of Brideshead: Alys, Always at the Bridge reviewed

16 March 2019 9:00 am

Nicholas Hytner’s new show, Alys, Always, is based on a Harriet Lane novel that carries a strong echo of Brideshead.…

Deserves its classic status: Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train at the Young Vic reviewed

9 March 2019 9:00 am

Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train by Stephen Adly Guirgis deserves its classic status. This wordy and highly cerebral play pulls…

A torpid seminar on why Trump is the Antichrist: Shipwreck reviewed

2 March 2019 9:00 am

When reviewers call a work ‘important’ they mean ‘boring’ and ‘earnest’. And in those terms Shipwreck is one of the…

The worst Arthur Miller play I’ve ever seen

23 February 2019 9:00 am

All About Eve is Cinderella steeped in acid rather than sugar. Eve, or Cinders, is a wannabe star who uses…

Martin Freeman as Gus and Danny Dyer as Ben in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter

Danny Dyer is not so much an actor as a fairground attraction: Pinter Seven reviewed

16 February 2019 9:00 am

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play from 1957 that retains an extraordinary hold over the minds of theatre-goers. It’s…

Cost of Living at Hampstead Theatre isn’t a bad show – and it contains a star in the making

9 February 2019 9:00 am

Hampstead has become quite a hit-factory since Ed Hall took over. His foreign policy is admirably simple. He scours New…

Cate Blanchett in When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other

A winning hoax: When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other reviewed

2 February 2019 9:00 am

The NT’s new play is an update of Pamela, a sexploitation novel by Samuel Richardson. It opens with Stephen Dillane…

Ron Cook and Celia Imrie – who steals the show in Party Time – in Pinter Six. Photo: Marc Brenner

A facile indulgence: Pinter Six reviewed

26 January 2019 9:00 am

The cast of Party Time includes John Simm, Celia Imrie, Ron Cook, Gary Kemp and other celebrities. They play a…

Rupert Graves and Colin Mcfarlane in Pinter's 'hilarious sketch' Victoria Station. Photo: Marc Brenner

One masterpiece, one dud and one interesting rediscovery: Pinter Five reviewed

19 January 2019 9:00 am

One masterpiece, one dud, and one interesting rediscovery. That’s Pinter Five. Victoria Station is a hilarious sketch which might have…

Pro-Trump propaganda at the Donmar Warehouse by Lynn Nottage. Photo: Johan Persson

A masterpiece of pro-Trump propaganda: Sweat at the Donmar Warehouse reviewed

12 January 2019 9:00 am

Sweat, set in the Pennsylvanian rust belt, looks at a blue-collar community threatened by a factory closure. The script uses…

‘Brexit unleased something monstrous’: James Graham interviewed

5 January 2019 9:00 am

‘I try to interpret the most generous version of somebody’s actions,’ says the dramatist James Graham. This rare ability to…

A horror show that appeals to the intellect but not the gut: The Tell-Tale Heart reviewed

5 January 2019 9:00 am

The Tell-Tale Heart is based on a teeny-weeny short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The full text appears in the…

Sensational: the cast of Seussical

I couldn’t wait to escape this opaque, witless horror show: True West reviewed

15 December 2018 9:00 am

Sam Shepard was perhaps the gloomiest playwright ever to spill his guts into a typewriter. The popularity of his work…

Carl Mullaney as a charismatic Dame in Lyric Hammersmith's Dick Whittington. [Photo: Tristram Kenton]

Lyric Theatre’s Dick Whittington is the opposite of festive garbage

8 December 2018 9:00 am

One of the biggest stars of the 1970s was the professional lard-bucket Mick McManus, who plied his trade as an…

Joanna Murray-Smith as Patricia Highsmith in Switzerland at the Ambassadors Theatre. Photo: Robbie Jack/ Corbis via Getty Images

Intelligent, unfussy, literate – the West End needs more plays like this: Switzerland reviewed

1 December 2018 9:00 am

I know nothing about Patricia Highsmith. The acclaimed American author wrote the kind of Sunday-night crime thrillers that put me…

Astonishingly powerful: Michelle Terry as Lady Macbeth and Paul Ready as Macbeth

One of the finest productions I’ve seen at the Globe – a triumph of crony casting: Macbeth reviewed

24 November 2018 9:00 am

Michelle Terry, chatelaine of the Globe, wants to put an end to penis-led Shakespeare by casting women in roles intended…

Lee Evans in Pinter Three. Photo: Marc Brenner

Lee Evans’s acrobatic clowning is the best thing about Pinter Three

17 November 2018 9:00 am

Pinter Three appeals to opposite poles of the play-going spectrum. The birdbrains like me will enjoy the music-hall sketches while…

Maisie Williams as Caroline in the breathtaking new play 'I and You' at Hampstead Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan

One of the best plays I’ve ever seen: I and You at the Hampstead Theatre reviewed

10 November 2018 9:00 am

Lauren Gunderson’s play I and You opens in the scruffy bedroom of 17-year-old Caroline. Lonely, beautiful and furious, she’s unable…

Lee Evans in Pinter Three. Photo: Marc Brenner

Mean-spirited, muddled, idiotic and puerile: Martin McDonagh’s A Very Very Very Dark Matter reviewed

3 November 2018 9:00 am

In the year since it opened, the Bridge has given us the following: a harmless Karl Marx comedy by Richard…

Sam Troughton and Claudie Blakley in Nina Raine's Stories. Photo: Sarah Lee

The Inheritance isn’t theatre — it’s mesmerically boring TV

27 October 2018 9:00 am

Stories by Nina Raine is a bun-in-the-oven comedy with a complex back narrative. Anna, in her mid-thirties, had a boyfriend…

Sian Brooke and Alex Hassell in 'I'm Not Running'. Photo: Mark Douet

Women should boycott David Hare’s slanderous new play: I’m Not Running reviewed

20 October 2018 9:00 am

Sir David Hare’s weird new play sets out to chronicle the history of the Labour movement from 1996 to the…