696 stories by "Libby Purves"
SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL…GET OUT OF BED AND PULL HIMSELF TOGETHER… It is almost comically calculated to stir up timid traditionalists. The enchanted sleeper is a bloke – David Emming…
WHO NEEDS CHARLTON HESTON? I have a weakness for schlock-historical movie epics, due to a regular childhood treat when I was at school in France and my Dad and I would sneak down …
THE HAPPIEST PEOPLEÂ Â OF ALL… For half a generation there has been a truism in the musical theatre world that nobody can do Jule Style and Bob Merrill's FUNNY GIRL, because…
 YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL! SURE YOU WANT IT? Revolving sleek as a spaceship is Es Devlin's multi-layered set: the office and neon slogans of Swan cosmetics: bottles and jars, sed…
THE BELLS! Â THE BELLS! Â THE BOOMING! "Where else" says an exasperated Sir Henry Irving , asked at the gates of Heaven to justify the profession which estranged him from his religious m…
SUNRISE TO STARLIGHT, A NORTHERN TRAGEDY Under a bleak black mountain panorama, this is a shattering play about selfishness, mismatched love, and how grief and guilt can make you mons…
SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE… Another flickering evening in the candlelight of the Globe's Jacobean theatre: engrossing, melodramatic, comic, epic. Ben Jonson was disparaging about Pe…
The last American import Rufus Norris brought to the National " The Motherf"-er with the Hat " was a five-mouse delight, a bold choice which rightly just won a Best Play award. Less welcome …
STILL SHOCKING, Â STILL SEXISTÂ ! Â Â GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES SMACKS HIS LIPS OVER A VINTAGE PINTER… I get the itching feeling that if anyone else had written th…
Mid-life, an insurance salesman who will never be a big enough man to fulfil his big dream. Better to pretend- plan, to deny daily reality in the glow of an imaginary future and sanctified c…
OH YES IT IS! Â Â CHIPPY , HOME OF PANTO, STRIKES AGAIN It is, famously, the local panto for the Cameron family, though the paterfamilias PM himself might want to avoid swivelling head…
DOWN WITHÂ PAN AND CINDERELLA! After the high-priced saccharine vapidity of ELF , it felt like time to check out something both classier, and more affordable. Always perilous for th…
OPERA’S THE THING!  YOUR LIFE IS BUT A SIDESHOW!  HURRAH! A play about the foundation of Glyndebourne Opera – "Snobs on the grass" as some cruel postwar journali…
POLITICS AND SCANDAL; IT WAS EVER THUS.. You're an MP, a clever lawyer with cross-party popularity, newly invited into Cabinet to steer through a Bill to disestablish the Anglican Church and…
A DOUBLE BILL: RATTIGAN AT PLAY AND IN GRIEF There may be voices which jibe at Kenneth Branagh for being producer, deviser and co-director of a year-long season, finding starry casting like …
Kenneth Branagh's Garrick year as actor-manager opens in unquestionable triumph. One of Shakespeare's greatest, most redemptive plays is richly served without flaw or gimmick, traditional in…
ROLL UP, ROLL UP, ROLL OVER… It's back for Christmas: pure entertainment, faux-decadent but full of heart, skilful and cheerful and elegant and daft. In the great glittering tent by th…
CURLY HAT AND STRIPY STOCKINGS TIME Play critic-cliché bingo once they’re out! One point each for “Elf ’n Safety”, “National Elf” , kids with phones …
FLOUNCES AND FLIRTS, Â INSULTS AND INNUENDOES…A RESTORATION ROUTÂ There's a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamp…
There's a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamper , getting stuck in ropes and tripping over a life-size model crocodile. So…
MEERA SYAL’S MEENA…A MEMORY OF THE 70s, THOUGHTFUL FOR TODAY Any show playing Slade and T. Rex standards before the curtain has me well softened up So does the wide, generous vis…
CHOPPER BIKES AND CHANGE, Â TEENS IN THE DAYS OF TIE-DYE… Any show playing Slade and T. Rex standards before the curtain has me well softened up So does the wide, generous vision of …
A MAGICAL GLADE OF OFFICE FURNITURE…
Of all Shakespeare's comedies, this is the one which most combines memorable lines " the seven ages of man, Rosalind's quickfire epigrams about love…
FROM THE FIRES BELOW, Â O”NEILL’S Â ACCUSING VOICEÂ From the opening moments of Richard Jones' stunning, nightmarish production of Eugene O'Neill's early play we have both…
OINK! SWIPE! SNOG! STAB! "Ohhh Tim, you beautiful filthy boy!" cries Tina the pig-farmer's discontented wife, succumbing drunkenly to some pan-banging draining-board sex. Filthy he is indeed…
