696 stories by "Libby Purves"
SPALL, SQUALOR, AND 1960 Â I do not routinely worship at the shrine of Harold Pinter. I can study, appreciate and accept the menace, the unspoken, the rhythmic near-poetry of dialo…
TO BOLDLY GOÂ OFF YOUR HEAD, IN SPACE We are in the melamine mess-room of a space pod on the dead, black planet Pluto, with a crew of five. Unless one of them is a delusion of the nervy se…
THE CLASSIC COMEDY OF CLASSÂ ANDÂ CONFUSION Â We're back in the 1960's, and how! Beyond the jolly geometric curtain a bygone world revives. Shiny pink plastic boots, a r…
A CREEPY BRILLIANCE Â FROM QUEBEC What's going on? Who are the people in the next flat, why are they so friendly and yet so odd? Are they commonplace swingers, murderers, or a delus…
HEAD, HEART, AND HOPEFULNESS "God" says Christopher Riley, donnishly, "has a severely limited intellect". Jack Lewis, his Magdalen colleague, demurs with affectionate impatience, secu…
REASONS TO BE UNREASONABLE… I had almost forgotten seeing the first in this Neil laBute trilogy – Reasons to be Pretty – until the looming, hapless figure of Tom Bur…
BRANAGH AND BRYDON GO BANG Well, you’ll never see our Kenneth Branagh more exuberantly violent, nor tumbling into more compromising positions; nor so crazedly drugged, veering f…
THE TRUTH GAME. OR NOT. Its' a while since so many shrieks, barks and snorts of laughter shook the seats around me: don't take your drink in, you’ll risk doing the nose trick in th…
NOTAHIT On the banks of the Nile, the princess of Egypt lifts a Jewish baby from the Nile waters, but changes her mind, chucks him back and chooses a prettier one. The reject survives…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI WATCHES MOZART WIPE THE FLOOR WITH THE COMPETITION – AS USUAL Pairing a copper-bottomed opera classic (Mozart's Così fan tutte) with an imported A…
PLENTY OF ACTIVITY, NOT QUITE ENOUGH RADIANCE This theatre is certainly fearless about potentially tasteless names – Bad Jews, Urinetown, now Miss Atomic Bomb: the first two of those, …
“OVERPAID, OVERSEXED, OVER HERE”…AND NOT AT EASE... In 1942 the Americans came to rural Britain: the US Eighth Air Force, its members often outnumbering local villagers 50 …
THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN RANTS AGAIN, Â THEN CHANGES SEX This is a sharp bit of work by Derby, marking 60 years since John Osborne's splenetic debut blew the lid – so theatre legen…
A TWO-WHEELED CHARIOT OF FIRE I suppose there must be some lazy, vacillating, unfocused Yorkshirewomen, but I’ve not met one yet. Â And of that tribe of gritty, unselfpitying,…
IT GLITTERS! Â IT SINGS! IT MAKES SENSE. EVEN INÂ MAD TROUSERS! Â I expected a big splashy jukebox musical, a-glitter with tearful Broadway sentiment and popster pizzazz. And i…
THE DAWN OF WAR, Â 1914 World War I and its aftermath are being well served by theatre (my last year's reflections, http://tinyurl.com/q53tp5p). But Jeremy James' play is the first …
LONG ISLAND, THE WIGS AND THE WARDROBE… The Jean Anouilh plays I devoured as a neurotic sixth-former always had Antigone, Joan of Arc or Thomas a Becket heroically refusing comp…
GETTING THEM OFF FOR VICTORY, UP WEST I loved this show at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and – especially given a couple of rather snotty lukewarm reviews – thought I should ch…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS UNEXPECTEDLY CASUAL ABOUT HIGH CULTURE Some people get terribly, passionately serious about Wagner. This shouldn't be a problem: truly great music…
BANG THE DRUM FOR THIS ONE: Â AN INTIMATE EPIC OF WAR AND FRIENDSHIP This premiere for the Park is a cracker: a serious, grownup, constantly entertaining light on history with fine-…
A FAREWELL TEMPEST, RICH AND STRANGE For a departing artistic director, especially here, Shakespeare's last plays are a natural choice: great poetic anthems of reconciliation and renu…
A RESTORATION OF HIGH SPIRITS.. Looking back at this play's first outing – in the outdoor, summery, rackety pleasure that is Shakespeare's Globe – I remember actually liking it f…
THEY CAME, THEY CONQUERED Call me a patsy and a soft touch, but you won't find me sneezing at anything which – within twenty minutes of a deafening, blinding opening – off…
McBURNEY ON, AND IN, THE BRAIN If there is any theatre artist reliably able to draw you into a world of disorientation, time-slip, near-death and a sense of licking hallucinogenic frogs in a…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI DISCOVERS SOMETHING GREEN AND FRESH BEHIND A LOT OF DEAD WOOD Robert Icke's new adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya is best summarised as an update " and an A…
