696 stories by "Libby Purves"
Quite a few people have asked about the theatre cat logo for theatrecat. Even more are curious about the mice. They are all created by Roger Hardy. Who is really a painter and creato…
O RAPTURE UNFORESEEN.  A G & S REFUSENIK RECANTS Right. Shoot your cuffs, hammer that piano, rum-ti-tum and off we go: When I was young I must confess I'd run a mile f…
IN WHICH A GOOD PLAY MOVES TOWARDS SOMETHING GREATER Sometimes, memories need to be revisited.  It was in autumn 2012 that I reviewed Lolita Chakrabarti's play starring her husband Ad…
A TERRIFYING, TRIUMPHANT HEADLONG  TAKE ON ORWELL I think George Orwell would be sourly pleased at the way Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan of Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse have …
GAUDEAMUS IGITUR! A FAVE FRAYN FARCE RETURNS Those who love a good farce – lost trousers, sock-suspenders, nifty door-work, ridiculous fights and punctured dignity - someti…
A THEATRE LEGEND RECREATED: AND RIPE FOR RE-EVALUATION Sometime in the first hour,  while far from unhappy, I realized that there are two things to keep in mind about Terry Jo…
A DREAM OF PLANKS AND PUPPETS, AND AN UPTURNED ASS… "Gentles, perhaps you wonder at this show. But wonder on…" says Peter Quince, lanky and earnest in a fairisle …
SEX,  STRIFE, AND  HOT THEOLOGY: ABELARD AND HELOISE RISE AGAIN "Theology in Paris these days" says tubby, jocose King Louis VI of France, "is more interesting than wrestli…
PORN:  THE NASTIEST COTTAGE INDUSTRY  Julie is alone, reminiscing with a cup of tea, calling her cat. She's a geriatric nursing auxiliary, gentle and cheerful, …
NEUROTIC OLD LOONS OR GENDER PIONEERS? Â Â Â Â Â There's a central metaphor:Â staring through the glass walls of her elegant West California apartment a woman says "It's a d…
THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO THE WISDOM OF FANDOM "Sometimes" says the author-heroine of this extraordinary piece,  "things can be richer if they don't add up".  Take that on b…
MISCHIEF GOES ON THE ROAD     Sometimes it pays to be a brave gang of friends, fresh out of LAMDA, putting on your own show rather than waiting for auditions.  Early …
TIM PIGOTT-SMITH SHOWS HOW IT’S DONE Few better fates can befall a new playwright than to have Tim Pigott-Smith cast – perfectly – at the heart of your premiere. One of…
BURIED BUT BRILLIANT:Â JULIET STEVENSON BRAVESÂ BECKETT "One does not appear to be asking a great deal"Â says Winnie of her husband Willie, who is mostly invisible behind a rock, gr…
SMALL LIVES IN THE GREAT WAR:  FORGOTTEN VOICES HEARD AND HONOURED Get seated ten minutes early.   In Alex Marker's humbly clever set, a bricky terraced house, the cast …
Just a note to say that I reviewed this when it first aired at the Tricycle in 2012, and was pleased to be one of those who voted its awards at the Critics' Circle. My review (Ti…
AN ERA RECREATED: THE REAL 1968 IN AN UNREAL WORLD The opening, in a student room correct down to the battered stack of albums, took me aback.   Friends, I was there in…
A LEAR TO REMEMBER: SIMON RUSSELL BEALE Â Â Â Â Â Â We are in a crumbling modern gerontocracy:Â a conference chamber lined with soldiers, Lear white-bearded and gratingly imp…
FEMINISM? NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE IT! Eight women, on a great flight of pale stairs which light and flash, introduce themselves politely. "Single Mum, White" "Brittle First Wif…
WOMEN ARE REVOLTING! BUT AGAINST WHAT??? The world is changing. "Women are standing for President, men are exfoliating" Don, an amiable klutz who used to teach but fell back on a…
 THE PITY, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND FASCINATION OF WAR A howl of Arctic wind subdues the settling audience, facing one another from benches across a snowy floor. Screens informs us that a…
SPOOKS, SECRETS , SEDUCTIONS If you are, like me, addicted to Spooks on television and to the deeper-rooted psychologies of John le Carré, Dawn King's new play feeds the sam…
HORROR , BEAUTY, CANDLELIGHT It is a tiny jewel-box, this new indoor playhouse: a reproduction of the Jacobean theatres which succeded the wooden O of the Globe. Clean pale wood benches …
A VIRTUOSO BECKETT TRIO It's a weird hour, this, even for late Samuel Beckett. Three short solos, performed by Lisa Dwan in an impressive feat of memory and mood, …
AUSSIE DINOS RULE There is a good reason why frazzled British parents cherish Australian nannies: and every cheerful, firm, gung-ho, reliable quality we dream of is exemplified in Lindsey Ch…
