696 stories by "Libby Purves"
LORD, WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE… "Doors! Sardines! Getting them on, getting them off. Getting the doors open. And shut. That's farce. That's theatre. That's life!" Ah, how bitterly t…
THIS VERY NIGHT SHALL THY SOUL BE REQUIRED OF THEE… God is sweeping the big blank stage. We won’t know for a minute or two that Kate Duchene IS God, given she’s a weary gre…
SHIP OF FOOLS GOES AGAINST THE FLOW… This is the play which flooded the Olivier stage and the National Theatre electrics in 1982. Of all Alan Ayckbourn's massive oeuvre it is one of the ra…
MEN UP A DEAD END… The marvellous junk-shop set by Paul Wills comes into its own most gratifyingly when Damian Lewis finally loses control and trashes it. For most of the play it simpl…
FROM BOMBER CREW TO ZIMMER DAYS: A TRIBUTE FAIRLY PAID As the aged heroes of World War II slip gradually away, the urge to bear witness feels ever stronger. In Rattigan's recently revived FL…
GUEST REVIEWER CHRIS PALING SEES AN ORTON OEUVRE IN ITS TRUE HOME.. Joe Orton would have liked The Emporium. This deconsecrated Methodist church has been a theatre and café for a couple of …
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION AND ITS END What do you do after a revolution? Tyrant toppled, lives sacrificed, people feeling entitled to reward, reformers aflame with rapidly diversifying ideas. M…
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE. WITH TONGS. The Clarion is a newspaper which hates immigrants. And liberals, especially those on the hated rival Sentinel, a barely-disguised Guardian. Britain, it s…
THE SANDS OF TIME YIELD UP THEIR DREAMS This is Eugene O'Neill's only comedy: the moment when from his vortex of family addiction, illness, loneliness, romantic seaward longings and deep hum…
THREE OF THEM IN THAT MARRIAGE… You get plenty of cautionary tales in John Ford's little-remembered 1633 play. For one thing, if you get three women pregnant at once with promises of marri…
FIFTY GRADES OF A? Â ( EDUCATIONAL SADISM TODAY) During the first half, parents of teenagers will cringingly hope that Jonathan Lewis' play is fanciful: a comically exaggerated libel on a …
WILLÂ GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES TORE-ADORE IT? Â READ ON The best way to describe this play is as a sideshow. There is a performance of Bizet's opera Carmen somewhere, and playing out a…
ADMIRABLE ELEANORÂ An old woman, cadaverous under harsh light, wakes fretful, remembering a war and shuddering at the Cuba missile crisis : it is 1962. We know that it will resolve, but i…
IT DON’T GET BETTER THAN THIS… Is there any odder opening line to a big musical number than "Have an egg-roll, Mr Goldstone"? Is there any dryer account of the emotional tangle o…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES TAKES HIS INNER CHILD FOR A HAPPY SPIN… As Mrs.Twit wisely points out – children are horrible. Too many "family shows" forget that. Instead of sweetness…
The list of winners is now widespread, but for theatrecat tolerators and friends, some review notes on how it was to be in the actual ROH seeing it happen: – definitely the best produc…
A RUGBY REDEMPTION "I've known since you were seventeen" says Gareth Thomas' exasperated team-mate. "When you said you wanted me to be your best man, why do you think we spent a whole aftern…
A BOHO CLYTEMNESTRA No sooner do we get over Kristin Scott Thomas going murderously nuts as the original Electra at the Old Vic, than along comes April de Angelis with a sly, hilarious, biti…
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS: HOW IT WAS, AND HOW IT WASN’T David Hare's 1994 play reimagining the 1992 election – elegantly staged by Headlong and director Jeremy Herrin – has toure…
RHETORICALÂ ROMANCE… Ah, Cyrano! Fighter, scholar, poet, maverick: ever since Edmond Rostand's 1897 play, set in an imagined musketeer-y 17c, he has been an archetype of reckless gen…
THE GENTLEMANLY ASSASSIN RIDES AGAIN. AND HOWE… Klaxon alert! Outrage merchants , boots on, scramble! In an election season here are theatre types in North London doing a play about To…
GREATER THAN GREEK: Â ATTENTION MUST BE PAID The greatest plays keep their truth but strike you differently every time. I saw Arthur Miller's masterpiece at twenty, then ten years ago was …
A SNORTER? OR Â A SMOKED POSSUM? It was in 1865, on the stage line "You sockdolagizing old mantrap!" that John Wilkes Booth took advantage of a guaranteed laugh to shoot dead President Abr…
The National Theatre paid tribute to the phenomenally successful artistic director. Libby Purves was there
THE BOUQUET! IT WAS POISONED! We are supposed to be thinking about the history of European antisemitism, tracking back to the 16th century when Christopher Marlowe wrote this play ,and the 1…
