696 stories by "Libby Purves"
A FABULOUS LITTLE FRIGHTENER… What's going on? you quaver, as four characters move and weave at impossible angles around a bare scaffolding of wall and door shapes. Are they gripped by…
MIKE BARTLETT’S OTHER NEW PLAY… It's played by a man – John Hollingworth – and a woman, Rachael Stirling. But it is not a love story, not that kind of love any…
WORLD WAR I:Â THE PITY, THE POETRY A tin whistle, a distant seagull, a ship hooting beyond grimy tenement windows. Indoors Sylvester and Simon bicker and cringe as a tight-lipped v…
IT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE. IT TELLS A LOT OF PEOPLE. An artful cloud of insecurity surrounds James Graham's new, mainly verbatim, play about the reckless modern surrender of privacy…
TOP QUALITY NONSENSE Light as a feather, puffy and sweet as a puffed meringue, this is where complete nonsense meets consummate skill. Not surprising: it is an adaptation of an 1892 Feydeau …
THE BUTLER, THE FETE, AND THE HOLLYWOOD HORROR I saw this Coward revival last summer in Bath (Times review, £, http://tinyurl.com/qyxqbw2 ) with its gorgeous Palladian country-house drawi…
DANCING UP A STORM ON THE OLD NORWICH ROAD In a brief opening, Shakespeare quarrels with his favourite clown Will Kemp: creator of Faltaff, Feste and the rest. He resents the ad-libbing. "Le…
WHO NEEDS JURASSIC PARK? RE-LIVE THE 80s WHEN THATCHER ROAMED THE EARTH She's back, the Iron Lady, with a war-cry of "No!" and a warmly patronizing memory of "The men!…I can pin them w…
AND SO IT GOES ON… (review of part I just below) Â Â Such is the traditional, ungimmicky nature of Greg Doran's productions that it is quite a shock when "Rumour", …
BOOZE AND BATTLE, GRACE AND HUMANITYÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The tale of troubled Henry, threatened by rebellion, haunted by guilt at Richard's murder and exasperated …
RADICAL FEMINISM – IT'S NOTHING NEW… Now here's politics! The mistress of the runaway Tory MP is a revolutionary preacher, previously known as Mad Agnes. She berates her lover wi…
DARK BITTER JOY: A PERFECT CONFECTION This play is vintage Alan Ayckbourn: elegant, polished dramatic machinery serving a darkly comic and rueful human heart. Perfectly suited to a renewed a…
A MUGGLE DOES SOME MAGIC This has to be the most explosively determined statement ever that "I am not just the one in those damn Harry Potter films!". Harry Melling, who from the age …
OH GROW UP, GIRLS! Maybe this play about "friendship, feminism and what it means to be successful" would be less annoying if the characters – Bella, Jane, and Jane's boyfriend Toby …
HIGHTIDE WINS A DAZZLING PAYNE PREMIERE O happy conversion! It is awkward and gloomy for a critic to admire and acknowledge a play's clever originality, yet privately feel nothing. Nick Payn…
STARK, PURE AND PERVERSE: A TRAGEDY FOR THEN AND NOW This is the toughest of tragedies: it may be a domestic affair, set among poor Italian immigrants under the Brooklyn Bridge in the '40's,…
CHARLES, CAMILLA,  WILLIAM, KATE…THEIR FUTURE? AND OURS? Billed as "a future history", Mike Bartlett's new play begins with a chanted Lux Aeterna for the Queen's fune…
A SUMMONS FROM THE PASTÂ TO MAKE THE PRESENT BEARABLE.. The horn is the most primitive of instruments: a column of air, blown through a cone. Even in the most sophisticated forms, …
LOVE AND THE TRAITORS:Â A 1930 WORLD There will be voices which hail this revival of Julian Mitchell's magnificent imagining of the 1930's schooldays which bred the Cambridge spies –…
THEY MAY BE DIRTY BUT THEY’RE EVER SO DIOR… The best moment of proper musical-theatre comedy in this slick hard-hearted show comes not from its principals (though they do …
YEARNING, FUMBLING, PHILOSOPHIZING:Â BEING FOURTEEN In 1891 Franz Wedekind rattled the cages of German propriety with this – subtitled "A children's tragedy". Its themes of 1…
NIGHTCLUBS AND NIGHTINGALES -Â BLACKMAIL IN THE BLITZ It is endearing that this musical's tour should coincide with the first same-sex marriages: it is built round a gay love affai…
PITY AND TERROR: A PUB PREMIERE OF RARE QUALITY The Finborough has done it again: produced the most remarkable new musical of the year, shudderingly emotional, harsh and passionate, f…
NO SQUASHED CABBAGE LEAVES:Â A FAIR TRIUMPH Rarely have I seen George Bernard Shaw's tumbling torrent of ideas and indignations delivered with such joyful, entertaining panache, or…
POLEMIC, COMIC, FURIOUSÂ Â Â Â Â Â (note: theatrecat saw this a fortnight ago in the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, where it premiered, but respects tonight's embargo) You might…
