696 stories by "Libby Purves"
THE MERCHANT OF VEGAS RIDES AGAINÂ Three years ago Rupert Goold reimagined Venice for the RSC, taking 'casino capitalism' literally, setting it amid decadent gilt arches and roulet…
SUPERBLY SILLY BUT FAR FROM ELEMENTARY In a beguiling 221b Baker Street set, referencing clockwork and tyrannized over by a brassbound Victorian video-countdown, Watson is talk…
MINCE PIES AND MIDLANDS MERRIMENT I caught this in its heartland, at the MAC in Birmingham. Half of the audience were clearly experienced followers of Janice Connolly's creatio…
ANIMATED, ANIMATING, ADMIRABLE, ADORABLE Â Â Let's be honest. It's nearly Christmas. You could flinch at the thought of staggering in after a day of guilty shopping to fac…
This is not a review, because the show is not offered for review until its transfer to Birmingham in January. I went because I had heard about its development. And hell, Rula Lenska is a sec…
YO HO HO – Â PIRATES AND PARROTS ON A DEAD MAN’S CHEST The first thing to say is that the sets are extraordinary: magnificent, nightmarish, romantic. Lizzie Clachan makes drama…
NOEL COWARD'S CHRISTMAS SPIRITS St James Theatre SE1 "I'll sing of home and love and work, Of Magna Carta and Dunkirk And Christmas bells and charity and pride…" Who is this,…
CHRISTMAS 1914: Â A TRIBUTE, A MEMORY, MANY QUESTIONS That supermarket ad gives a potted version of the 1914 Christmas ceasefire in no-man's-land: British soldier gets parcel with c…
SO LIFE GOES BY, WITH MELANCHOLY BEAUTY… Is there anything more healing, more reassuring of human kinship than the sound of an audience sighing together, murmurously anxious, fo…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SPENDS THREE MOVING WINTERS IN WAR-TORN CROATIA 3 Winters takes us to the beautiful old Kos family house in Zagreb, Croatia, in three different years: 1945, 1…
PETITE BUT PERFECT PANTO. Oh yes it is. To start with, he's a real kid: a young goat. Matthew Kellett, a cheery figure with furry chaps, horns and ears poking through his cowboy h…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI CAN’T RESIST A BIT OF THE OLD RAZZLE DAZZLE Gilbert and Sullivan is true Marmite music: some love it, some don't. It is also, without doubt, a litmus te…
SURE START ,  SPEED HUMPS,  SOLIDARITY AND SENTIMENT… Sharp timing, the night before the Autumn Budget Statement! It's about a Labour council in a post-industrial, work…
A CENTURY OF SADNESS, MADNESS, AND GUNS "Angry men don't write the rules, and guns don't right the wrongs". The message is unheard in the nightmare fairground, where beneath ra…
BENEATH THE STREET, DARK PASSIONS BATTLE… What better place to muse on secretive 1930's sexual angst than under Jermyn Street, once synonymous with sharp shirts and smart tar…
MORALITY, MELODRAMA, AND MANSERVANTS… "Suppose I drive down to some newspaper office" says the foxy blackmailerine Mrs Cheveley to the horrified MP Sir Robert Chiltern "A…
A MODERN DATE, Â AN ANCIENT NEED… You could say it starts with a happy ending. Well, of a sort. Certainly the blackout is riven by an exuberant sexual racket, and as th…
…AND MISCHIEF THEATRE GETS IT TRIUMPHANTLY RIGHT My latE Dad hated the theatre, for the kindest and most dignified of reasons. He preferred cinema : in live performance he feared th…
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES AGAIN – BAFFLED BY MODERN BIRTHWAYS, Â SOLDIERSÂ BRAVELY ONÂ AND WISHES IT HAD WORKED Immediately this play had the whiff of a concept. This…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES LURKS HAPPILY AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM There is nothing funnier in the world than kids swearing. This play gets us as close to that as possible wi…
TWO LONELY LIARS IN AÂ BIG SAD CITY… Â Â Here's a curiosity worth catching: the only full play by Norris Church Mailer, widow of Norman Mailer (who greatly admired it). It was …
ALL HUMAN LIFE: Â A TERRIBLE BEAUTY ON A RUBBISH TIP In the interval of this headlong, crowded kaleidoscope of a play it was hard to know where the second part of David Hare’s…
THE PRICE OF VICE… The accolade is a knighthood: services to literature for the debonair Will Trenting, already a Nobel for his novels on the seamy side of life. The play is set…
BURLESQUE BLISS (AND BOON…) There's a towering, assertive giant gay blue rabbit in skintight Spandex, a stripping trapeze artiste hurling garments at the front row, a sadfaced clown wh…
ALED AND TOM DO THE SHOW RIGHT HERE… Aled Jones is wonderful. Honestly. He is. Won't ever hear a word against him. This contentedly hokey stage revival of Irving Berlin's 1954 seasonal…
