All stories by Friends on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

JULES AND JIM Jermyn St Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

    REDEFINING FEELINGS IN AN AGE OF ANGRY ANGST “We are three people trying to redefine feeling” they say.  They do this between Paris, Munich, Salzburg and Greek islands, and either…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:58AM
Thursday, April 20, 2023

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES Almeida, N1 by Libby Purves and Friends

BLAZING MUSIC HOLDS THE HOUSE TOGETHER        After 1930’s Donegal at the NT the day before,  Dancing at Lughnasa portraying a group of women meeting  stress and poverty with danci…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:26AM
Wednesday, April 19, 2023

DANCING AT LUGHNASA Olivier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A SAD LOST WORLD . A HUMAN BEAUTY There is particular genius in creating a play which doesn’t build to a showy debacle but grips you with the possibility of an unnamed crisis,  and  so f…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:11AM
Tuesday, April 18, 2023

THE WAY OLD FRIENDS DO Touring by Libby Purves and Friends

​ABBASOLUTELY A DELIGHT   ​​    ​​      If there is a formula for a cheerful touring play in our frazzled and disputatious times, it would go like this:  warm but a bit rude…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:09AM
Friday, April 14, 2023

PRIVATE LIVES Donmar, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

NEVER FLAT, COWARD There ’s always a slight frisson when Noel Coward’s rueful, dark-streaked romantic comedy  is revived in our censorious age.  We are nine decades on from the night i…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:06AM
Thursday, April 13, 2023

HAMNET Swan, Stratford upon Avon by Libby Purves and Friends

LOVE, DEATH, GRIEF       It’s  a joy to have the intimate Swan auditorium open again, refurbished after going dark in the first sudden Covid closure, and to see once again a strong, ni…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:32AM
Wednesday, April 5, 2023

SEA CREATURES Hampstead, NW3 by Libby Purves and Friends

SEA FRET        I’ll give it one thing: over an hour into this infuriating two- hour play there’s a brief but wonderful part for the veteran June Watson. She stumps in with octogenar…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:57AM
Tuesday, April 4, 2023

FARM HALL      Jermyn st Theatre WC1 (then Bath) by Libby Purves and Friends

  BEAUTIFUL SCIENCE. UGLY WORLD        Unexpectedly enthralled, I spent an hour and a half eavesdropping on six nuclear physicists, and couldn’t be more glad to have caught up on thi…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04AM
Sunday, March 26, 2023

HAY FEVER The Mill at Sonning by Libby Purves and Friends

BLISS WITH THE BLISSES I don’t always make it through the Oxfordshire lanes to the gorgeous, eccentric, water-wheeled Mill, but the thought of Issy van Randwyck as Judith Bliss lured me . …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:30AM
Sunday, March 19, 2023

MARJORIE PRIME Menier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

FUTURE IMPERFECT      Artificial intelligence and robotics have long been a boon to us ethical-scifi buffs,  films like AI and I, Robot mercifully saving us from rocket ships and aliens …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PM
Wednesday, March 15, 2023

GUYS AND DOLLS Bridge, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

HYTNER ROLLS ANOTHER WINNING DICE     Daniel Mays has played a lot of tough-guy roles but has by nature a rather innocent and worried-looking face.  It is this quality that Nick Hytner sp…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AM
Tuesday, March 14, 2023

BRILLIANT JERKS Southwark, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

RIDE A WILD APP    In  a week when tech firms shuddered at the shock demise of their favourite bank, how better to spend 90  minutes  withJoseph Charlton’s exhilarating, fast moving 3…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:28PM
Sunday, March 12, 2023

THE CHILDREN Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds by Libby Purves and Friends

A RADIATING RESPONSIBILITY          Since I watched Sizewell A going up as a child,  live close to Sizewell B and dwell amid a forest of local posters furiously condemning Sizewell C, …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:17PM
Tuesday, March 7, 2023

THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF MUSICAL Noel Coward Theatre WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

SUGAR RUSH  I can never resist scribbling down rhymes in new musicals, whether in a spirit appalled or admiring.    Take a bow Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary – writers of this extreme ca…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:00AM
Sunday, March 5, 2023

THE TIME MACHINE          touring  by Libby Purves and Friends

AN UN-SOLEMN WARNING FROM THE FUTURE    H.G.Wells is the inspiration,  with a larkily extrovert Dave Hearn from Mischief Theatre pretending to be his great-grandson, heir, and owner of th…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:59PM
Friday, March 3, 2023

GRENFELL: SYSTEM FAILURE. Tabernacle & Marylebone by Libby Purves and Friends

MORE DETAILS, MORE  DEVILRY          An Afghan army officer flees the Taleban and finds safety on the 23rd floor of Grenfell Tower.  His local nickhame is  “Sabar”, meaning “pa…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:48AM
Tuesday, February 14, 2023

STANDING AT THE SKY’S EDGE. Olivier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

 HIGH ABOVE THE BRUTAL AND BELOVED CITY       It’s an architectural moment. Within the stark brutalist NT is a set in homage to a brutalist landmark:  the early 1960’s Park Hill Fl…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AM
Friday, February 10, 2023

PHAEDRA. Lyttelton, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

COUGAR CHAOS     The Greeks just go on giving.  Writer-director Simon Stone’s play,  set today amid the upper-middle classes of Holland Park and second-home Suffolk,  credits itself m…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:53AM
Thursday, February 9, 2023

THE LEHMAN TRILOGY. Gillian Lynne Theatre WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

A MONETARY MORALITY PLAY         Three hour-long plays, two intervals, three men in black frock-coats explain some financial history in a revolving glass box in front of a projected , m…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:05AM
Monday, February 6, 2023

LINCK AND MULHAHN Hampstead, N1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A TALE FOR TODAY FROM A PRUSSIAN PAST      Here’s a love story, an idyll of 18c Prussia:  Corporal Anastasius Linck, a Hanoverian musketeer in dashing white breeches and shiny buttons …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PM
Wednesday, February 1, 2023

JUMPING THE SHARK Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds & touring by Libby Purves and Friends

SITCOMS MADE US, BUT CAN WE MAKE THEM?     It’s a very good idea, bang on the money:  David Cantor and Michael Kingsbury (TV sitcom writers with a pedigree) set their play in a bland pr…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:51AM
Monday, January 30, 2023

MY SON’S A QUEER (BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO?) Ambassadors, WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A BLAST OF DAFT JOY    Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!  Here’s a treat.   Disney music, blasting out before this vigorous 65-minute one-man spree, sets the mood.  It is carnivalesque, fantastical,…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:52PM
Sunday, January 29, 2023

THE ELEPHANT SONG Park Theatre N4 by Libby Purves and Friends

 A PATIENT TO TRY PATIENCE          It must be challenging to play a psychiatrist at work , maybe especially in Finsbury Park   where there are bound to be a few in the audience.  Yo…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:11PM
Wednesday, January 25, 2023

NOISES OFF COMES UP WEST Phoenix, WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

Just a few new notes on this , as its completes its triumphant national tour with (amazingly) no stopping-injuries despite the heroically vigorous slapstick direction by Lindsay Posner (move…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15PM
Thursday, January 19, 2023

WATCH ON THE RHINE Donmar, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

HELLMAN’S LESSON IN HUMANITY      Theatre can offer few more topical messages for a nation which might hesitate over Ukraine’s needs than this neglected one-set domestic play by Lilia…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:28AM

IN THE NET Jermyn Street Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

PULLING THE WOOL         Most dystopian visions set themselves quite far in the future. Misha  Levkov, however, keeps us in 2025, specifying that productions should always be set a cou…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22AM
Wednesday, January 18, 2023

ALLEGIANCE Charing Cross Theatre WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

AN OLD INJUSTICE REMEMBERED        An old man steps onstage alone:  upright, soldierly in khaki as a former US war hero who is,  he says resignedly,  “brought out every year on the …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:37AM
Friday, December 23, 2022

MANDELA Young Vic SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A TALE FOR ALL TIMES   The story of Nelson Mandela has become almost a folktale: imprisoned for 27 years for campaigning against the hideous “apartheid” regime which kept  the black ma…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:42AM
Sunday, December 18, 2022

MOTHER GOOSE Duke of York’s Theatre WC! & touring by Libby Purves and Friends

THIS DAME HAS A WHOLE LOT BEHIND HIM       I last saw Sir Ian McKellen onstage  as Lear,   missed him as the oldest Hamlet ever,   but far longer ago saw him in a frock at the … Cont…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:15AM
Friday, December 16, 2022

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS Avenue Theatre, Ipswich by Libby Purves and Friends

BREEZILY BLOWING IN FROM 1908, FRESH AS EVER      In Mole End on Christmas Eve,in a burrow cosy with domestic detail  they’re breaking out the beer and sardines and reminiscing about t…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:34PM
Tuesday, December 13, 2022

SONS OF THE PROPHET Hampstead Theatre NW3 by Libby Purves and Friends

A TRAGICOMIC BEAUTY     Hard to express how much I loved Stephen Karam’s play. Maybe it just hit the right moment:  yomped through freezing night, strikes and ‘severe delays” readi…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31AM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 11, 2024: Oh, Mary! - Lyceum Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre
TBA: Titanic
TBA: Ragtime