All stories by Friends on BroadwayStars

Friday, December 10, 2021

PANTOLAND mk2 Palladium, W1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A PRIMA DONNY JOINS THE FEARLESS FOUR     Last year as a family we came to see the doughty quartet doing this variety show, an adult-joking  non-panto to fill the fearful gap.  It was th…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:31AM
Thursday, December 9, 2021

BEST OF ENEMIES Young Vic SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

1968 AND ALL THAT  James Graham’s mission might seem unfashionable: trawling 20c history and public culture, looking not for villains and heroes but for the nuances of human behaviour,  …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35PM
Tuesday, December 7, 2021

THE BOOK OF DUST Bridge, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

PULLING OUT THE STOPS FOR PULLMAN     First things first: this is the most wonderfully evocative, romantic and dramatic bit of set-projection you will see all year. Bob Crowley, video maes…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:07PM
Monday, December 6, 2021

THE PLAY WHAT I WROTE Birmingham Rep by Libby Purves and Friends

A REVIVING REVIVAL      Do you need to be of a generation to remember Morecambe and Wise, to which this play is a loving tribute-cum-amiable-ripoff?  Probably not. They are stamped on th…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:36PM
Friday, December 3, 2021

THE TEMPEST           Jermyn St Theatre SW1 by Libby Purves and Friends

ISLAND OF WONDER AND UNEASE         One of the interesting, rewarding quirks in Tom Littler’s small-but-perfectly-formed Tempest is that Tam Williams doubles as Ferdinand, the ultra-vi…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:31AM
Wednesday, December 1, 2021

FOUR QUARTETS Harold Pinter Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

GLIMPSES OF ETERNITY  (Review first published on D.Mail, in shorter form)        This is wonderful. Sometimes a simple short  performance can shake, rouse, even change you.  So step a…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:19AM
Sunday, November 28, 2021

COME FROM AWAY   Phoenix WC1    REPRISE  by Libby Purves and Friends

worth going again I say..  Just thought I should mention to theatrecat readers how wonderful this show it.  Saw it twice before the pandemic, nipped back to a matinee a week or so back.  …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:34AM
Wednesday, November 24, 2021

MANOR Lyttelton, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

2021 BRITAIN IN A STATELY STORMY NUTSHELL    Just what we needed, I thought!  A good old state-of-the-nation black comedy with a semi-derelict Manor in a howling storm,  the sea wall abo…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AM
Thursday, November 18, 2021

THE WIFE OF WILLESDEN Kiln, NW6 by Libby Purves and Friends

SIX CENTURIES ON,  IT’S GEOFFREY CHAUCER’S ROUND        Zadie Smith humbly refers to her first play as more like “homework” than the novelist’s usual dread of a blank page. Ch…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:19AM

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE     Charing X Theatre, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

A CHEKHQUERED RESPONSE          Vanya and Sonia are siblings – though she is adopted – and have led dull dutiful lives in a remote country house surrounded by cherry trees and an or…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AM
Wednesday, November 17, 2021

LA CLIQUE Leicester Square Spiegeltent by Libby Purves and Friends

       ROLL UP! IT’S BACK! Ah, Christmastime!   There’s nothing like a buff chap in spike-heeled patent thigh-boots somersaulting in the air to make you feel festive. Unless it�…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56PM

STRAIGHT WHITE MEN.       Southwark Playhouse, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A HUMAN ZOO OF ALPHA MEN There are good plays to be written about white male privilege, and about modern capitalism and its relentless expectation of self-promotion and constant advancement …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:37AM
Sunday, November 14, 2021

PRIVATE LIVES Touring, Chichester next by Libby Purves and Friends

THEY DO NOT GROW OLD AS WE IN THE STALLS GROW OLD       May as well tell you,  last week I had the ultimate pensioner experience, and it was a blast.   A midweek, senior-price matinee i…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:07PM
Friday, November 12, 2021

BOBBY AND AMY               Seagull Lowestoft, touring on by Libby Purves and Friends

TWENTY YEARS AGO, ANOTHER HEALTH CRISIS CHANGED LIVES    Just before the pandemic closed everything down, Emily Jenkins’ deft two-hander  won a top Edinburgh Fringe award and many plaud…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55AM
Thursday, November 11, 2021

TOP HAT The Mill at Sonning by Libby Purves and Friends

FACE THE MUSIC, AND DANCE!        This was a new outing for me.    I have long loved the Watermill some miles west,  but I hadn’t really registered the Mill at Sonning with it’s e…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01AM
Wednesday, November 10, 2021

SIX Vaudeville, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

Reprise: they’re still at it, as good as ever      If I were a PR for the Society of London Theatres,  I would get these six performers together for a photocall with the five from Prid…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15AM
Monday, November 8, 2021

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE    Duke of York’s Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

  THE MYTH AND  TERROR THAT CHILDREN KNOW          Sometimes a violent rip occurs in the thin veil of materialism ,commonsense, morality and law.    Children know this: a bereaveme…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:28AM
Thursday, November 4, 2021

INDECENT PROPOSAL Southwark Playhouse, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

COULD YOU? WOULD YOU? FOR A MILLION BUCKS? Here’s a struggling young couple (well, not that young,  both on second marriages and he has a daughter going to college). Along comes a billion…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:18AM
Wednesday, November 3, 2021

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (SORT OF) Criterion, WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED TO BE A HOOT          It had to happen: someone had to notice that in the comfortable upper-middle and aristocratic worlds of Jane Austen’s novel,  nothing c…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:43PM
Saturday, October 23, 2021

TONY! A rock opera newborn at the Park Theatre N4 by Libby Purves and Friends

NOT  A REVIEW BUT SOME JOLLY NEWS Not a review,  because this was the first performance of a modest weekend testing the water:  a script-in-hand, moustaches-falling-off,  fresh-outta-wor…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:49AM
Tuesday, October 19, 2021

GET UP, STAND UP! Lyric Theatre, WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

  THE  HEART STILL FEELS THE BEAT         Everything Bob Marley sings lifts the heart,  instructing it to rise and triumph and unite in joy:  lively-up yourself!   Let’s get toget…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:08PM

GRENFELL – VALUE ENGINEERING Tabernacle Theatre, W11 by Libby Purves and Friends

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAIL: scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry    There was a spate of criticism when Richard Norton Taylor’s dramatisation of the Grenfell Inquiry was announced, despite it b…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42AM
Saturday, October 16, 2021

WHITE NOISE Bridge Theatre, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

 THE RACE WHERE NOBODY WINS       This feels like a howl of baffled frustration, from a millennial generation ( writer and director, and all four characters) unable to deal with the emo…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59AM
Thursday, October 14, 2021

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH Almeida, N1 by Libby Purves and Friends

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH.        Almeida, N1 THE SCOTTISH PLAY WE NEEDED   Say what you like about star-casting and auteur-ish directors messing with Shakespeare, but sometimes a multiple…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59PM

INTO BATTLE Greenwich Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

AN OLD STORY OF YOUNG MEN     Balliol College Oxford, 1910. Confident young Etonians are hurling crockery downstairs, yelling “I’m a bastard, I’m a bastard, rather be a bastard than …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:30AM
Sunday, October 10, 2021

OUR WHITE SKODA OCTAVIA Sir John Mills Ipswich & touring by Libby Purves and Friends

EAST IS EAST, IN EAST ANGLIA       Shamser Sinha – who is on the National Theatre Connections project – relished the idea of writing a play about a South-Asian working-class family i…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:32PM
Friday, October 8, 2021

THOUGHTS ON CUSH JUMBO’S HAMLET Young Vic SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

AN EVER-MORPHING PROTEAN TEXT…RENEWS AGAIN BEFORE OUR EYES      Every Hamlet should give us something new.  The play is a philosophical and psychological labyrinth,  its jewels and se…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12AM
Wednesday, October 6, 2021

THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT Gielgud, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

 FOUR WIVES LATER,  MANTEL AND MILES COMPLETE THE JOURNEY It was rising eight years ago  that the first two parts of Hilary Mantel’s majestic Wolf Hall  trilogy came to the stage, adap…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20PM

THE WOMAN IN BLACK (yes, honestly) by Libby Purves and Friends

NOT QUITE A REVIEW, MORE A TRIP DOWN A SIDE ALLEY I was on the early train up when news came that poor old Southwark had ,for the second time, been forced by illness to cancel two performanc…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AM
Sunday, October 3, 2021

BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS touring UK by Libby Purves and Friends

WHO NEEDS PANTO? A CLASSY FLIGHT OF FANCY ON THE ROAD      This show, which I had the joy of seeing in a packed Theatre Royal Norwich alongside many small  thrilled children,  knows exa…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:59AM
Thursday, September 30, 2021

THE NORMAL HEART Olivier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

THE LAST GREAT PLAGUE        If you lived as an adult alongside the onset of AIDS forty years ago you don’t forget it: the lost friends and workmates , the rumours of ignorance which h…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:13PM

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