696 stories by "Libby Purves"
BLUEBIRDS OVER DOVER, RATTIGAN ON A ROLL Yesterday , on her hundredth birthday, Dame Vera Lynn had her face projected on the white cliffs of Dover and a flight of Spitfires was due ov…
BREXIT MEANS… A BIT OF A DOG’S BREAKFAST Rufus Norris of the National Theatre is to be applauded for taking on the post-referendum mood, and making an honest stab at under…
TOP HATS AND TALES A nice gag in Richard Harris' 1983 play comes in some desultory chat between the ladies of the tap-dancing class. Referring to a play one of them has recommended to…
WEDNAPPED: THE HELL BEFORE THE CALM I really fell for this 2014 comedy by Chris Chibnall, writer of such dark telly stuff as Broadchurch. Not just because it is a hoot, a wickedly joy…
THE DARK HEART OF MARRIAGE One audience tweeter emerged calling James Macdonald's fine production “exhilarating”. A wet rag after three hours' exposure to it, I wouldn't e…
LET COWARDS FLINCH AND TRAITORS SNEER…WE’LL KEEP THE LAFITE FLOWING HERE Some moments of modern history deserve reimagining by honest playwrights: we need to rememb…
LUKE JONES, FRESH FROM HAMLET,  SPINS WITH ECSTASY AT THE NEW R & G I first and last saw this play whilst at school. It was slowly and quite unforgivingly murdered by fello…
CLEESE MEETS FEYDEAU. DOES IT WORK? Farce. French farce. Feydeau farce. Fin-de-siecle farce with curly cornices and ladies in corsets. Feelings about the genre are always, for me, …
NEVER TOO OLD TO GO ROUND AGAIN… In Arthur Schnitzler 's LA RONDE was a scandal: a chain of sketched sexual encounters in which one of each couple moved on to a new seduction…
LUKE JONES EXULTS: A TACTILE MORIARTY PULLS IT OFF FOR A NEW GENERATION We’ve had so many ‘great’ Hamlets it’s hard to either keep track or care. Cum…
SWEET AS A NUT, SHARP AS A TACK Helpless, really: I was putty in its hands. And I caught it a few days late, so no risk that the ecstatic giggles in the stalls or the standing ovation…
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES GROPES FOR DIAMONDS IN THE MUD Timothy Spall tells a good story – bear with me – about performing a Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Nationa…
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME AND BENDING OF GENDERS.. It's a grand thing to be seduced and succumb. To suspect a director of vainly messing about with a Shakespeare play too close to your he…
BACK TO FAUST PRINCIPLES "I hope nobody misses / The moral in a show as short as this is.." . Marie Corelli, whose 1895 bestseller on the Faust theme inspired Luke Bateman and Michael…
FIVE GO ROARING UP WEST… This is a transfer, and well deserved. My Menier review is below…and I stand proudly by every star of it. Five playful mice. But below you will find a…
AN AGED ELEGANCE Beau Brummel is back in Jermyn Street, a century on from his decline, bankruptcy, royal disfavour and exile to a Calais convent madhouse. Down the road from his statu…
YOUNG, CONFLICTED AND GAY: VOICES FROM 1968 It feels dated now: the shrieking queenery, the preening Jules-and Sandy camp, the insider camaraderie. Oh and the angs: the misery of self…
THE WATERS RISE ROUND  TOKSVIG ISLAND… There's a bit of conflicted-critic syndrome here. Sandi Toksvig is one of the most amiable wits of today: fun, sharp, humane, sensible,…
MORTIFICATION AND MERRIMENT ON TOUR   It was a young Jane Austen who wrote this wonderful squib of a novel, and its delight is in the absurdities and agonies of youth: credulo…
THE LITERARY LIFE,  AS SHAGFEST Those still wondering why on earth 42% of women voted for Donald Trump may feel enlightened by the way in which – in this successful Americ…
CORPSES BY CANDLELIGHT "Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood, and not be tainted in a shameful fall?" asks Cardinal Monticello of the murderous Lodovico, a man who tends…
A DAFT DETECTIVE DOUBLE-ACT Retro clutter round a piano: files, a hatstand, model house, gun, notebook, handcuffs. We are in the territory of smalltown detective fiction, a touch of the Poir…
DAFT,  DIRTY,  BUT GREAT I remember it at Edinburgh a few years ago : a sly, elegant witty refreshment on an arid Fringe day. Poet-actors Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna deployed…
RIBBIT! RIBBIT! FROGS, FOOLS, FABULOUS Here's a tonic for theis flat , glum season! Divinely tasteless, bracingly cynical , hootingly funny (jokes from subtle to silly) and directed with pac…
MOCK TUDOR, RIOTOUS BUT NOT RUFF It's described by its creator Pat Whymark as "a sort of Tudor/Muppets mash-up with a respectful nod to Blackadder and DIY SOS". To which I would add e…
