1,538 stories by "Libby Purves"
FREAK ALONG WITH ANCIENT GREEKS The Greek gods, with their legends , family rifts and seduction of hapless mortals, are irresistible to all who love dramatic retelli…
SAD HEARTS AND SHOWBIZ The play begins in a pure music-hall moment: below the stage a hammeringly jolly piano, onto it a capering leg-show chorus and sparklers, ushering…
AFTER THE SHOOTING Despite the title, Anna Yates’ setting in an episcopalian church room full of calm skylight, and one effective moment near the end, Fran Kranz’ tense 105-minute p…
A MUSICAL IS BORN…OUT OF POP”S PAST I liked this rackety, brassy, exhilarating banger of a show: a cartoonish bit of history, a jukebox musical with a heart of gold .…
ETHICS AND EVASIONS It’s a cluttered upper room, overcrowded with grand old furniture, a gramophone, harp, oddities like fencing foils and a home-built valve radio. The sense is o…
UNIVERSAL , INTIMATE, TRUE Sometimes it’s more than worth it to flog irritably through a London strike day, make it without even time for a drink but find someth…
IMPRESSIONS AND OBSESSIONSÂ Â Â The old `Players' Theatre has a good eye of oddball new musicals, cheap enough to sample before anyone's train home. And here off-Broadway's Carmel Owe…
A SHUDDER FROM THE PAST I came to this fresh from admiring two 76-year-olds , Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep, being painfully cool and haughty in a trailer plugging Devil Wears Prada 2. Â …
FRIENDSHIP, BRILLIANCE, DOUBT Â Â Â Â The universe as a bundle of unknowable of approximates:Â Relativity and Complementarity, Uncertainty theory, quantum mechanics, particles …
A HOUSE OF ANCIENT SHAME     What terrible secrets lie in an impressive yet spooky mansion, with artful descending ceilings and a trapdoor designed by Jon Bausor ? We…
RUPERT AND BRENDA Â Â Couldn't miss this piece of 40th anniversary history by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky because I had a very small "Â infinitestimal "Â dog in this fight. I wa…
  CRY HAVOC!  Director Tamara Harvey, who gave us that beautiful, thoughtful PERICLES last year (also starring Alfred Enoch),  is not one to interpret Henry V in the stormingl…
TOO DEEP FOR TEARS Perhaps this imagining of the young Vincent gains extra power after the emotional hit of the recent Van Gogh at Arles exhibition; starry nights and wonder lie fresh in…
REACH FOR THE LIMITLESS STARS    This 70-minute squib was a big Fringe hit, though one clenched reviewer suggested that it could only appeal to those who love physics. This f…
SECOND HOME HOLIDAY HELL IN OLD RUSSIA    Watch a Chekhov play, and however deep the characters' despair and disappointment you feel the author's love, just as you do f…
MYSTICISM AND MISCHIEF     This extraordinary show from Kadimah Yiddish Theatre, based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's story (and absolutely not with the Streisand movie…
BROKEN HEARTS AND MACAROONS: A DISTANT WAR CLOSE TO HOME Â Â Â Â Â How is it for a family to be a symbol, focus and vortex of murderous global disharmony? Â The Rosenbergs k…
A DARKNESS FROM THE PAST, WITH MODERN ECHOESÂ Â Â Â Â Â Fittingly in ou age of outing, condemnation and cancellation there have within a twelvemonth been three plays about t…
1939: GLOBAL MOMENT , INTIMATE PAIN    There are some tremendous moments in the last ten minutes of this late-period Arthur Miller play: some from Pearl Chanda as Sylvia,…
A THOUGHTFUL ANGER Â Â Â Â We need to know and feel something beyond the daily global news; sometimes theatre can place us carefully and mercilessly in the room and try to make us…
A 1920's BIRD OF PARADISE IN THE HENCOOP Â Â Trust Trevor Nunn to make this a bit of an event: a rarely-seen Noel Coward play set with ferocious accuracy and style in its birth-year 192…
THE MARY ANN WHO BECAME GEORGE ELIOT Â Â Â It's 1842; Bird Grove is the handsome house near Coventry which Robert Evans bought in his retirement from managing a grand estate. With he…
PEERLESS, COMPLETE WITH PEERESSES   Melodious romantic yearning and extreme nonsense, Victoriana sending itself up in rap-speed pattering rhyme and lovesick fairies invading the …
GAGS BEFORE GRAVITAS  They're a national treasure:Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey, inventions of Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay long before the age of Spads and WhatsApps. The TV shows…
WICKED ECHOES FROM ANOTHER DEPRESSION      Well, here's something oddly familiar! A legendary international financier with charm, vast wealth, grubby fingers in many p…
