696 stories by "Libby Purves"
HOWL, HOWL, HOWL! IT'S COWELL MOST FOUL… Only gossip-writers should review the audience, but seeing this was the gala premiere of Harry Hill's X-factor musical , and that most o…
McELHONE -  BUTTERFLY OR BUNNY-BOILER? It is 27 years since James Dearden saw his film script explode into public consciousness, deify Michael Douglas as a hapless adulterer a…
PALM TREES ,POLITICS, LITERATURE , LOYALTIES.. With a fine dramatic flourish the Old Vic is again a theatre-in-the-round, as it was six years ago for the Norman Conquests. The refit (…
FJORDS, FATALITY, FRAGMENTATION The young man lies on the settle thinking about his dog. It's run off. His mother, stiffly repetitive between pauses, tells him he's a grown man and shoul…
SPIRIT OF '84 IN A BUDGET-DAY FARCE "Why is a civil servant from the Home Office posing as a Dr Christmas from Norwich auditioning an actor from Kingston?". Why is a hotel corridor a…
ANGELA LANSBURY BACK ON THE BOARDS, IN VERY GOOD COMPANY It is Angela Lansbury's hour and ovation, back on the West End stage at 88 after forty years away. We'd be on our feet out of mer…
A TERRIBLE BEAUTY: INSPIRING, INTIMIDATING, INVALUABLE The lad in the Army Recruiting Office listens enthusiastically to the Para behind the desk speaking of comradeship and adventure. B…
DEVILISHLY SILLY, BUT NOT STUPID Satan (Adam Long in plastic horns) came up to earth in human form in 1964 because he was "excited with what was going on in musical theatre", notably…
Affluence has dented our buccaneering spirit, says Libby Purves
PREJUDICE AND THE PREMIERSHIP:  A GAY FOOTBALL STORY As gay shame and secrecy gradually fade from British life, one of the last frontiers is professional football. We know fro…
THE MAKING OF A MILITANT SUFFRAGETTE Emily Wilding Davison died 101 years ago at the Derby, under the thundering hooves of the King's horse. Nobody knows for sure whether she intended ma…
MAKING A SPLASH: URINE SHOWBIZ NOW! Are they taking the piss? This extraordinary 2001 American musical by Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis ran three years on Broadway after a frin…
CLASS, RACE, LUCK AND LIES: AMERICAN AND UNIVERSAL In tough South Boston they approvingly say someone is "Good People". It carries a sense not only of individual value but neighbourh…
TWO CITIES, FIVE STARS, ONE THRILLING EVENING With an elegance which bodes well for James Dacre's captaincy of this lovely theatre, its filmhouse programmed The Invisible Wom…
PIES, PRATFALLS AND POLE-DANCING: SATURDAYS AND THE SEVENTIES (NOT A CHILDREN’S SHOW…BEWARE..)  Oh, the wicked 1970's!   Sexist, racist, rapist: gropey DJs …
LET THE BAND PLAY ON Billy Elliott, The Full Monty, now Brassed Off -  thirty years on from the loss of pits and steelworks, we seem to need a national rite of mourning and expiat…
1919: A GENERATION CAST ADRIFT BY WAR After the Armistice, in spring 1919 the Treaty of Versailles drew lines on the map and enforced reparations. Its decisions cast long shadows even to…
FIGHTS, FLIGHTS, PANTALOONS AND PRENTICES: BUT THE GROCER’S WIFE IS THE STAR. Imagine three hours on a bench watching a cross between Spamalot and The Real Inspector Hound, per…
MORE THAN A MOVIE: SOMETHING SPECIAL FROM SHEFFIELD The opening is dramatic: a small gap in the rusty corrugated curtain reveals showers of sparks, a glimpse of steelworks magnificen…
WALKING THE STREETS, A FAR FROM LOST SOUL Phyllis Pearsall became one of London's great urban legends, through her own barnstorming memories and a fictionalized biography. A young wife, …
PASSIONATE, INTENSE AND WILD: JANE EYRE REBORN  “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me!”.   As if in answer to Jane's cry of defiance Sally Cookson’s Ã…
OLD IRELAND: PLAYFUL, POWERFUL, INTENSE AND TRAGIC A hot summer at harvest's end, 1836. Outside a stone barn in County Donegal  old Jimmy-Jack is chortling naughtily over the …
SONYA AND ANDREY: A BRIEF ENCOUNTER BY FRIEL Two lonely middle-aged people meet in a cheap Moscow café in 1920: she frowning over accounts and mortgages, he in frayed evening cl…
A BLAST OF FRESH AIR FROM THE FIFTIES "Cinema is as bad as the theatre these days" says Jo's mother Helen disdainfully. "All mauling and muttering".  Written in 1958 by th…
SINGING ALL THE WAY DOWNHILL "Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey and I ache in the places where I used to play.." Ah, Leonard Cohen! Nothing like it when you need it.  Which…
