696 stories by "Libby Purves"
Violetta is a reduction of Verdi's La traviata, using only three characters: the doomed courtesan Violetta, her idealistic yet immature lover Alfredo, and " surprise! Alfredo's mother.
David Hare has made as much sense of Ibsen's sprawling masterpiece Peer Gynt as seems possible.
The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ The Musical is the result of Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary badgering the late Sue Townsend to be allowed to do it, and with poppy tunes and a high…
This 25th anniversary revival of David Greig's play Europe is, for the most part, a long chin scratch about home, belonging and division.
When I left I thought I was disappointed in The Starry Messenger, but this morning I can't help thinking about Matthew Broderick's character Mark, and his wife, and the sadness of all our mi…
Musically Dido is okay, especially Eyra Norman's Belinda and the spirited chorales. But it could have been a piece of theatre magic, and wasn't.
After the querulous, inward-looking tedium of her feminist polemic The Writer, Ella Hickson returns to interesting form with this curiosity, Anna.
Five mice for White Pearl at the Royal Court Theatre because it's different and clever and useful, and horribly good fun.
Hopes for The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson couldn't be higher: it is again built around truth " a 2016 dinner party where Boris and Marina Johnson entertained the Goves and Yevgeny Lebed…
A CLEANSING FURY FROM THE 1880s     Wipes you out every time, Ibsen's furious, shocking, violent assault on the cruel decayed conventions of his century's end. …
Couldn't miss Nicholas Hytner's bit of mischief: after his years of being being alternately feted and rubbished in print, he displays directorial glee in sending up the noisome denizens of a…
This is a full period-dress production, executed immaculately but probably needing another few cuts to be unalloyed joy. The plot is labyrinthine, with a wordy torrent of finely honed wit an…
It's a fast-paced, funny and stylish cabaret performance from an impressively talented cast, all of whom are terrific, and bringing a different style and flavour to a lesser- known back cata…
Not a harsh word can be uttered about any of the big Sondheim numbers, or against the stellar cast " especially the women. Imelda Staunton, Janie Dee, Tracie Bennett, Josephine Barstow " be …
BEVERLEY ON THE ROAD AGAIN This a fascinating play, not least because forty years on we can't seem to get enough of it. Cherished by am-dram, revived by excellent casts and theatres, …
A DANGEROUS PASTORAL You wait months for a violently emotional taboo-smashing play by Edward Albee and two come along at once. After the bitter razor-sharp humanity of Who's Afraid of…
THE HOME LIVES OF OUR OWN DEAR LAWYERS… When a topic is painfully current and theatre plunges in, the heart does not always sing with optimism. But Nina Raine is an old hand , a…
TWO CULTURES, ONE TRICKY DEAL David Henry Hwang's play as a hit in the US, and as it premiered at this enterprising little theatre under diretor Andrew Keates, I took an appropriate f…
MOLIERE , MOZART, MARBER AND A MORAL.. Something for everyone here. I like the assonance, alliteration and rhetorical flourishes in Patrick Marber’s reworking of the old Don Juan myth …
A HANDBAG FROM THE PAST.. This is a joyful thing, and it needn't have been. There is always peril in a play you know too well from schooldays and through a score of performance…
AN AMPHIBIOUS SONDHEIM ROMP Here's the god Dionysius, deprived of his Noel-Coward smoking jacket and unconvincingly disguised as Heracles in a lion skin. He's having a panic attack on…
ETERNITY WAS IN OUR LIPS AND EYES…. ..and also, frankly, in the stalls. Some evenings, often here at the RSC, three and a half hours pass in a flash leaving you dazed, affected and tearful…
SPQR: THE ROMANÂ SEASON STRIKES HOME WITH COLD STEEL The trumpet sounds for the RSC's Roman season, the mob is rowdily onstage, and the turbulent politics of 44 BC are reflected thr…
MOTHER COURAGE WITH A CRIMINAL TWIST Yetta Solomon survived the Ukrainian pogroms when Cossacks raped and murdered her family. But they didn't get her. Ten years old in 1919 sh…
THEY GOT RHYTHM..OH YES This is the big one, the Broadway spectacular, the one where rom-com meets top-flight ballets in more costumes than you can blink at; where dream-sequen…
