696 stories by "Libby Purves"
SHOCKING, SHAMING, MAYBE SALUTARY It is a cliché to say that over decades of TV fame, showy fundraising and hidden sexual crime Savile 'groomed the nation". There were indeed encomia –…
SUNNY SUMMER KICKS AND SOARING SONGS Here's a joyful thing: a confection of butterscotch and sunshine, a tale of turrets and twosomes and tap-breaks, friendship and chivalry and secret passa…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES SAYS “BACK OF THE NET, MARBER!” "This isn’t a church, it’s a 'business!" What a sentiment for a theatre crowd to hear – or indeed anyo…
FROCK-COATS AND FLOODS, TUNNELS AND THE THAMES In the week that Crossrail tunnellers broke through beneath London, a city and river now criss-crossed with subterranean thoroughfares, h…
THROW IT UP, KEEP IT MOVING, THAT’S LIFE… With August looming over the horizon, there comes a time when the critic needs to harden up, sit on some prickly astroturf leaning…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES TACKLES THE ROUGHAGE The Oresteia is probably one of those stories you don’t know. Until you start watching it again. Only then, piecing together fragments, d…
BANKSY, SEX, AND STAGE DIRECTIONS In a tatty rehearsal-room, the title reflects the director’s frequent cry, stopping for new stage directions or rewrites from the un…
BROADWAY VICTORIANA DOESN’T QUITE GET THERE It was David Lynch's 1980 film – monochrome, moody, with an unforgettable performance by John Hurt – which brought to modern awa…
AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE We're in a World War I field hospital with iron beds and the corrugated-iron, battered detritus of trench warfare below. But young men will always leap and lark like…
ALL FIVE MICE REJOICE (CHURCH MICE, CLEARLY) FOR A MODERN HISTORY-PLAY Above the table cluttered with last-night’s paper cups, high windows show St Paul’s dome; …
SONGS, SCUFFLES, VILLAINS AND VIRTUE IN 1707 Towering staircases and sliding panels transform the big stage from tavern to genteel house, with a pleasingly inexplicable intermittent folk-ban…
DARK, STARK AND DANGEROUS: Â A MERCHANT FOR TODAY What an odd, stark, angry, intelligent Merchant this is! Wholly unlike the last RSC production, Rupert Goold's spectacular Merchant-of-Veg…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES IS STIRRED BY REMEMBRANCE In quiet England we stand in silence. In Australia, at least in this play, they shout it from the rooftops and down it from the…
A DESIGNER, A DREAM, A DANCE, A DREADÂ "What is it about men with watching eyes…?" asks the ghost of Isabella Blow, she of the troubled soul and hilariously witty hats. One such man was…
BOYS IN BUSTLES: Â SWAGS AND SWAGGER IN VICTORIAN LONDON "The Unnatural History and Petticoat Mystery of Boulton and Park" cries the Victorian poster. "Men in Women's Clothes – with…
A DESIGNER, A DREAM, A DANCE “What is it about men with watching eyes…?” asks the ghost of Isabella Blow, she of the troubled soul and hilariously witty hats. One such man …
AN OLD ANGER, SPEAKING TO TODAY We are short of good political playwrights: they tend to hail from the left and be either depressingly prosey or brainlessly 'bouffon' (ISLANDS at this very t…
A SWELL PARTY… Joe Stilgoe the piano man holds the stage as we settle, receiving a fusillade of unhelpful audience requests (“Bolero! Summertime! Pink Panther! Prokoffiev’s…
IN WHICH THE OLD LION OF SCARBOROUGH TACKLES A TIMELESS PHILOSOPHICAL CONUNDRUM… …Which is to say, the question of whether time-travel would enable you to change the past, hence …
A WILD AND WOLFISH WALK IN THE WOODS Last time I went a Norfolk and Norwich Festival outdoor event, I had to spend the night suspended in a nylon flower-petal up a tree and get hugged by tre…
THE DARKNESS OF DEMENTIA Devastating. No other word for it. Without sentimentality, in Christopher Hampton’s powerfully simple translation, the French playwright Florian Zeller l…
THE BLISS OF JUDITH BLISS: Â FELICITY INDEED Whenever I see this beloved play again I wish it was my first time. It should be seen in youth – when the dread of embarrassing parents g…
IN WHICH THE QUEEN REGENERATES AS KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS A playwright’s work is never done. Not if politics are involved: Peter Morgan relates that once it became clear that David Camero…
STRIKE A LIGHT! FIZZLING OR FAILING, FRAYN ISÂ FUN This two-hour entertainment consists of squibs and sketches, five-finger exercises and amused imaginings by Michael Frayn. Who never real…
AND NOW THE REAL ELECTION…AT LAST… Election day, Tony Benn used to say, is the only time we are all equal. One citizen, one secret vote. And despite the short-sighted, corrupting…
