696 stories by "Libby Purves"
MARTYRDOM, MONARCHY, AND MOVING ON Summer1561. Queen Elizabeth is coming to town: feasts are prepared, the people excited, and Peter Moone the tailor is preparing a play with his fellow work…
AN OLD FIGHT HONOURED Sick of the patriarchy, girls? Take a safari to 1908 and visit the real thing. Witness the elephantine authority of Hugo deMullin, last of a line of beautifully pointle…
NOT EXACTLY SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST… 12 years ago John Darwin paddled out into the North Sea, faking his death for the insurance. He and his wife – who hid him for a while in a s…
STOPPARD'S MASTERWORK ON THE ROAD AGAIN It's a play of dazzling ideas, scientific and philosophical: Tom Stoppard at his most provocative. In 1993 the NT production won an Olivier; for some …
THE POOTERS RIDE AGAIN, PUB STYLE I had some misgivings, since I know the 1892 book by George and Weedon Grossmithalmost by heart: born in an age whose Punch-ish humour does not always chime…
A SHIPLOAD OF DELIGHT What can I say? Daniel Evans' production is delicious, it's de-lovely, a de-lirious succession of treats. There is always a fizzing joyful absurdity about Cole Porter's…
REMEMBERING REG…A REVIEW WORTH A Â REMIX Thought I should see how it feels in a bigger theatre, after writing at the Donmar that Kevin Elyot's 1994 play is "pretty much…
OH FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE… Sometimes in the reviewing business there's an almost irresoluble conflict between detached appreciation and wincing personal indifference: a temptat…
SIR TOM STOPPARD'S NEW PLAY. WOW. Is there more to human beings than organic goo? Can brain imaging explain why we judge, reason, imagine, generate metaphor and language? That is the …
THE MUGHAL EMPIRE: Â MURDER, FAITH AND FAMILY Â OK, I admit it, I feared "Important and Worthy". Or, possibly, important-worthy-yet-picturesque. A reasonable, if ungenerous fear,…
A TERROR AND A TRIBUTEÂ "May the Master of Mercy shelter them in the shadow of his wings". A Holocaust prayer is on a slip in the programme for this eve of the Auschwitz liberation…
Damon Albarn's musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's story, Wonder.land, will remind us that its fantasy is genuinely timeless, writes Libby Purves
BRAVE, BARNSTORMING AND CERTAINLY NOT BAD With Holocaust Memorial day imminent, the Paris murders fresh in mind and anti-Semitism rising across Europe, can you really put on a …
THE BIRTH OF THE BOMB This is what the RSC is for. Not mere Bardolatry, but to bring new work illuminated by the craft, humanity and wisdom which comes to those steeped in Shak…
BLAST OFF INTO THE PAST… Repolarize the rockanthemizer! Shakespearianize the iamb-ometer, fasten your retrocamp ironido-nebulized harness and prepare to be utterly weight…
MURDER IN THE DARKÂ The gorgeous giltwood brooding atmosphere of the new Wanamaker playhouse has seen comedy in its candlelight – the bonkers Knight of the Burning Pes…
A CULPABLE, CLOWNISH WASTE OF DAVOS WEEK This week sees the World Economic Forum in Davos. Today Oxfam said that 1% of the world's people own nearly half its wealth. Tax havens – many …
IN WHICH YOUR REVIEWER CRACKS UP ENTIRELY Tears are strange. They can fill the eye when witnessing not horror or sadness, but a sudden kindness. It is a kind of happy sorrow: m…
AND YOU THOUGHT SPIDERMAN WAS CREEPY… Imagine a rock-opera mashup of Frankenstein, Pygmalion and Dracula, hijacked by Marvel Comics and dressed up with cartoonish 1950s small…
TEENAGE KICKS AND SORROWSÂ In the most genuinely engaging sequences of this odd improv-based show, two of the ten-strong cast get a mat out and wrestle, struggling to rip off one a…
A FABULOUS FANDANGO OF FEMALE FURY… Sing to the lunatic moon: Hispanic hysteria, hilarity, tangled lives, 48 hours of Madrid madness. I had my doubts about this one, as did many…
SCARS OF THEÂ SOVIET IN A MOSCOW HOMEÂ There's a lovely, very Russian moment in Moses Raine's play (in from the Old Red Lion and directed by his sister Nina, author of Tig…
DROWNING NOT WAVING – TWO WOMEN ADRIFT Lancashire Ivy is waiting for a bus to Manchester, refined Joan for a taxi to a psychiatric clinic. Neither is happy, and nor are t…
The First World War centenary has been a fine year for the stage, which breathed life into a shattered generation, writes Libby Purves
Shabba-dabba-doo-wop! What a glorious evening. Grownup, dryly hilarious, sublimely jazzy. Josie Rourke's Donmar walks away with the palm for the season's top show. Or perhaps sashays …
