All stories by Friends on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

IDENTICAL Nottingham Playhouse by Libby Purves and Friends

 STARRY SISTERHOOD IN OLD VIENNA      Identical twin girls, separated at birth in their parents divorce, meet at summer camp and resolve to swop places.   Remember  “The Parent Trap�…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AM
Saturday, July 30, 2022

MACBETH Theatre in the forest, Sutton Hoo by Libby Purves and Friends

THE SCOTTISH PLAY ON ANCIENT TURF     “This castle hath a pleasant seat..”   Indeed it does:  Red Rose Chain’s traditional outdoor show now lives alongside the mysterious mounds wh…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:40AM
Wednesday, July 27, 2022

101 DALMATIANS       Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park NW1 by Libby Purves and Friends

101 DALMATIANS       Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park NW1 BARKING IN THE PARK        Wooof!    The OAT’s new show,  bounding and cavorting along  under the direction of that am…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:18AM
Tuesday, July 26, 2022

CRAZY FOR YOU Chichester Festival Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

CHARLIE IS , ONCE AGAIN, OUR DANCING DARLING…        Foiled by heatwave and trains,  I made it six days later to the summer’s highlight, the glorious absurdity of this wickedly succ…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35AM
Saturday, July 23, 2022

CHAMBER OPERAS ON TOUR caught at Thorington, Suffolk by Libby Purves and Friends

     Twice lately, under tall oaks and pines on what is becoming known as Suffolk’s mini-Minack,  I have encountered touring opera companies doing wonderfully, relaxedly, professionall…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AM
Thursday, July 14, 2022

JACK ABSOLUTE FLIES AGAIN Olivier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

SCRAMBLE!   CHOCKS AWAY!    Who knew that Caroline Quentin could achieve (almost) the splits, while strumming a ukulele?  Or that that Richard Bean and Chris Oliver – who a decade ago…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01PM

ANYTHING GOES Barbican EC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

DECK-LICIOUS, DELOVELY,  SAILING BACK IN STYLE A year on, and after a partly recast tour, SS America drops anchor back in the Barbican and in style. Actually feels even better than before. …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45AM
Tuesday, July 12, 2022

PATRIOTS Almeida, N1 by Libby Purves and Friends

  MOTHER RUSSIA AND ITS MEN     Here’s a fresh history play: confrontational , shocking, classic in its focus on vast flawed characters and pretty close to documented  – and very re…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:49PM
Friday, July 8, 2022

EVELYN Southwark Playhouse SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

MOB JUSTICE, NO JUSTICE      There are women who, seeing a friend in an almost-good outfit, cannot help reaching out: adjusting a belt , removing  an ill-judged frill, suggesting a hat.�…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:42AM
Thursday, July 7, 2022

BAREFOOT IN THE PARK Mill at Sonning, Berks by Libby Purves and Friends

STEP BACK TO THE SIXTIES SIMPLICITIES…   Once again , off to this most enticing dinner-theatre embedded in a historic treasure,  its big real watermill whirling away in the bar and the …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:35PM
Tuesday, July 5, 2022

THE SOUTHBURY CHILD Bridge SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

The review below is from its Chichester opening a couple of weeks back. So just a note on seeing it again: something that could well become a habit, because it really is rich snd fine. It wo…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:11PM
Thursday, June 30, 2022

RICHARD III Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon by Libby Purves and Friends

THE BOTTLED SPIDER, HEDGEHOG, ABORTIVE ROOTING HOG, IS BACK…MAGNIFICENTLY           The winter of discontent made glorious summer is ushered in with a wild conga round the stage under…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00PM
Wednesday, June 29, 2022

CANCELLING SOCRATES Jermyn St Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

ALL GREEK TO US, AND TOPICAL WITH IT Fascinating to see how, despite many light tempting fatuities and sentimentalities onscreen and onstage, and the countercurrents of self conscious experi…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:37AM
Tuesday, June 28, 2022

TONY!  The Tony Blair rock opera          Park Theatre N4 by Libby Purves and Friends

IT HAS COME TO FRUITION. REJOICE!    In a spirit of joyful pastiche, it’s a Sweeney-Todd sound that opens the show:  “`Prepare! To be made Aware! Of the most successful Labour Premier…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31AM
Sunday, June 26, 2022

PARADISE LOST caught at Thorington, touring by Libby Purves and Friends

OF MAN’S FIRST DISOBEDIENCE….  Thorington is a new outdoor theatre, a beautiful bomb-crater amid tall sighing pine trees and beneath a great oak in Suffolk.  It runs only one-night,  …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:08PM
Saturday, June 18, 2022

THE SOUTHBURY CHILD           Chichester Festival Theatre then Bridge by Libby Purves and Friends

VIA MEDIA ANGLICANA IN A NEW JERUSALEM       We’re in  a vicarage kitchen in a small West Country town,  its incumbent dealing with parishioners, a resentful, weary wife and two daugh…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:00AM
Sunday, May 15, 2022

ORLANDO Jermyn St theatre WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

WOOLFING ROUND THE GENDER BEND A bit of a conversion experience for me, this. Disliked Woolf for years, Lighthouse and Waves and all, and therefore never read Orlando. Thought of it as a bit…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:14AM

OKLAHOMA Young Vic, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A DARKER HAZE ON AMERICA’S  MEADOW Traditionally, audiences don’t go to Oklahoma to be unsettled . On the other hand you don’t go to the Young Vic to have your expectations cosily met…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:18AM
Friday, May 13, 2022

THE BREACH Hampstead Theatre NW3 by Libby Purves and Friends

TEENS FALLING, UNPROTECTED     An empty basement in a working class Kentucky neighbourhood in the mid 70s.  An offstage adult world is preoccupied with unemployment,  the mained young c…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:34AM
Thursday, May 12, 2022

CHINESE BOXING Touring by Libby Purves and Friends

A SCRUTABLE TAKE ON CHINA     This is a beguiling  70-minute solo show from the actor, writer, wandering maverick entrepreneur  and China pundit Mark Kitto.  He plays three parts in seq…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:24AM
Monday, May 9, 2022

THE CORN IS GREEN Lyttelton, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS       It is a curious feeling to be half charmed and half irritated by a production: one moment absorbed in a confrontation and engaged with a character, the next…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:21AM
Friday, May 6, 2022

MARYS SEACOLE. Donmar, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

NURSING ACROSS CONTINENTS      Kayla Meikle, stalwart in Victorian dignity and Caribbean matriarchy, addresses us firmly at the start of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s manic, sometimes  chao…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01AM
Wednesday, May 4, 2022

MIDDLE Dorfman, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

IN THE MIDDLE OF LIFE’S JOURNEY..THROW A PLATE OR TWO      Ah, middle age! Waists spreading outwards, options  contracting, marriage all too familiar, parents getting older fast and ch…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:21PM
Thursday, April 28, 2022

PRIMA FACIE Harold Pinter Theatre, WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

SEXUAL ASSAULT , HARD LAW, AND AN ASTONING WEST END DEBUT    Forget the cold sadistic clotheshorse Vilanelle from Killing Eve.  Actually, forget all Jodie Comer’s screen awards.  This …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:09AM
Tuesday, April 26, 2022

BARRY HUMPHRIES ; THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK Touring towards London by Libby Purves and Friends

HALF A CENTURY OF HAPPY MISCHIEF Full disclosure: I have been following this man around for the best part of 50 years. Went with my brother Mike to his first show, Housewife Superstar, at th…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48AM
Friday, April 22, 2022

HENRY VI REBELLION: and THE WARS OF THE ROSES Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford by Libby Purves and Friends

NOW THE TWO PLAYS TOGETHER HENRY VI: REBELLION.        ENGLAND IN FERMENT, AND SOME DANGEROUS WOMEN       We are in the 1450s, in a dangerous doldrum: Henry V of Agincourt is long dea…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:52AM
Wednesday, April 20, 2022

HENRY VI: REBELLION.        Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford u-Avon by Libby Purves and Friends

ENGLAND IN FERMENT, AND SOME DANGEROUS WOMEN       We are in the 1450s, in a dangerous doldrum: Henry V of Agincourt is long dead,  his stripling son married to  pretty French Margaret …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:22PM
Tuesday, April 19, 2022

JERUSALEM REVIVED: REFLECTIONS by Libby Purves and Friends

DO WE STILL LOVE ROOSTER?    So it’s back, another St George’s day before a west country village fair.   Twelve years on from Jez Butterworth’s glorious shock-troop assault on me…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:11AM
Sunday, April 17, 2022

THE 47th Old Vic SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

THE ORANGE MONSTER RIDES AGAIN   The first thing to say is what everyone has said:  that Bertie Carvel as Donald Trump is magnificent. Eerily so,  capturing not only the ex-President’s …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:04PM
Sunday, April 10, 2022

DIARY OF A SOMEBODY Seven Dials Playhouse W1 by Libby Purves and Friends

THE LOST BOYS OF THEATRE…    The  tiny Actors’ Centre is reborn under its new name, and since this play is set in what was a  traditionally febrile, theatrical, subversively arty qua…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:08AM
Thursday, April 7, 2022

“DADDY” by Libby Purves and Friends

 QUEER AS FOLK BY THE INFINITY POOL Jeremy O Harris is a much feted American playwright (a Tony for Slave Play) adept at drilling in to the moment:  BLM, fashionable white guilt, showy t…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:03AM