All stories by Libby Purves on BroadwayStars

Thursday, June 2, 2016

KENNY MORGAN Arcola, E8 by Libby Purves

ADRIFT ON ANOTHER DEEP, BLUE, LONELY SEA…   The Deep Blue Sea is Terence Rattigan's masterpiece (and about to play at the National Theatre). A young woman who has left her eminent…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:08AM[SHARE]
Saturday, May 28, 2016

A SUBJECT OF SCANDAL AND CONCERN Finborough, SW10 by Libby Purves

THE LAST BLASPHEMY TRIAL..AND ECHOES FOR TODAY   It is a thousand pities that John Osborne is predominantly famous for the spitting spoilt-brat misogyny of Jimmy Porter in Look Back In …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AM[SHARE]
Thursday, May 26, 2016

ROMEO AND JULIET " West End by Libby Purves

Kenneth Branagh's entire season has been built on one universal truth. From star to stage-sweeper, pack the production with the best talent and glorious things will inevitably follow. Why th…

SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:53AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, May 24, 2016

A VIEW FROM ISLINGTON NORTH " West End by Libby Purves

Here's a sharp one, beautifully suited to what is not only a Referendum season but one in which both main political parties are more than likely to do mischief to their leaders. We can't rel…

SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:14PM[SHARE]
Monday, May 23, 2016

FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS Crucible, Sheffield by Libby Purves

A HEART FOR BEAUTY,  A ‘FIFTIES DREAM     If Daniel Evans means to leave his acclaimed stewardship of Sheffield Theatre on a flood of tears, he's chosen the right producti…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:06PM[SHARE]
Saturday, May 21, 2016

BLUE/ORANGE Young Vic SE1 by Libby Purves

GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES  ON THE MENTAL  WARD...     You're clinically paranoid, you're black and you're bombarded on a daily basis with racism and when presented with an oran…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:44PM[SHARE]
Thursday, May 19, 2016

KING JOHN " Rose Theatre, Kingston by Libby Purves

Of Shakespeare's plays this is one of the least done and loved: there's disputed authorship of some sections, parts of the plot missing and replaced from another text. Sir Trevor Nunn takes …

SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:23AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, May 18, 2016

THE INVISIBLE HAND Tricycle NW6 by Libby Purves

A CAUTIONARY TALE OF TRADE AND TERROR     It is the modern terror that stalks our interconnected world. You're shut in a stone cell, alone and far from home, and in a chaotic incre…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:51PM[SHARE]
Monday, May 16, 2016

THE TEMPEST " Norfolk & Norwich Festival by Libby Purves

Director William Galinksy pays respect to the building's normal life by recruiting Lost in Translation Circus to evoke Ariel's magical powers: the stately Jane Leaney at ground level gets a …

SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:22AM[SHARE]
Friday, May 13, 2016

LAWRENCE AFTER ARABIA Hampstead, NW3 by Libby Purves

A DESERT HERO AND THE ROOTS OF TROUBLE..   One glory of Howard Brenton as a playwright is his ability to tease out, in very specific history plays (55 Days, Ann Boleyn, Dr Scroggy's War…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:50PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, May 11, 2016

THE COMPLETE DEATHS Theatre Royal Brighton, and touring by Libby Purves

AS FLIES TO WANTON CLOWNS…     You don't often see Queen Gertrude in Hamlet played by a short bearded Spaniard in a rainbow unitard with flamenco frills. But this is the Brig…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:54PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, May 10, 2016

I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE Jermyn St Theatre, SW1 by Libby Purves

SUPERNATURAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, YET YORKSHIRE ALL THE WAY…     Of all the lessons theatre has taught us about the backwash of WW1, some of the most fascinating are in 1930's pla…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:01PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, April 27, 2016

ELEGY " Donmar Warehouse by Libby Purves

Suppose neuroscience could cure creeping brain deterioration by taking out whole networks of decaying neurons and replacing them with silicon, guaranteeing functionality, but wiping years of…

SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:30PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 26, 2016

CLYBOURNE PARK Richmond & TOURING by Libby Purves

A MODERN MASTERPIECE   This is that finely balanced thing: a comedy built around a tragedy. Six summers ago, a newfledged critic for the Times, I wrote about its British premiere: "Bruc…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:56PM[SHARE]
Monday, April 25, 2016

SHOWBOAT NEW LONDON THEATRE WC2 by Libby Purves

ROLLING ALONG, CARRYING ALL BEFORE IT   Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly – you gotta laugh and you gotta cry. And believe me, you won't help loving this stunning, flawless, celebr…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:54PM[SHARE]
Friday, April 22, 2016

JUNGLE BOOK Theatre Royal Windsor & touring by Libby Purves

GRIME AND GRACE IN THE URBAN JUNGLE   You never know what you'll get from Poppy Burton-Morgan's Metta Theatre. I can't claim to have spotted every venture of her ten years, but definite…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:52PM[SHARE]
Thursday, April 21, 2016

THE COMEDY ABOUT A BANK ROBBERY Criterion, W1 by Libby Purves

MISCHIEF THEATRE STRIKES AGAIN. HURRAH!     Years ago, a famous US television show called Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In hit on the strategy – as Ken Dodd had decades earlier, a…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:14PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 19, 2016

THE FLICK Dorfman, SE1 by Libby Purves

LIGHTS! CAMERA!  SLOW BUT FASCINATING ACTION!       We sit as if we are the cinema screen of a run-down fleapit in Massachusetts: we confront the back wall at pro…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PM[SHARE]
Monday, April 18, 2016

MY MOTHER SAID I NEVER SHOULD… St James Theatre, SW1 by Libby Purves

SIXTY YEARS, FOUR GENERATIONS: WHAT THE WOMEN DID     Say, first of all, that Maureen Lipman was born to play Doris, the Lancashire matriarch at the heart of Charlotte Keatley's mo…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17PM[SHARE]

LEGALLY BLONDE, THE MUSICAL Curve, Leicester by Libby Purves

ELLE WOODS IS BACK,  PINKER THAN EVER   Full disclosure: transport , domesticity and a hacking cough meant that on this two-show day in the lovely Curve I had to skip out at the i…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:38AM[SHARE]
Friday, April 15, 2016

ONE MILLION TINY PLAYS ABOUT BRITAIN " Touring by Libby Purves

There are actually only about thirty, out of Craig Taylor's rather wonderful collection of 94 first seen in The Guardian. But the sense of our millions is there, as Laura Keefe's joyful, qui…

SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:36AM[SHARE]
Thursday, April 14, 2016

WIPERS Curve, Leicester by Libby Purves

THE HEROES FROM THE EAST   A hundred years ago, a Punjabi gunner in the 129th Baluchi regiment, Khudadad Khan, stayed at his post in the machine gun nest, injured and at bay , his comma…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:11PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 12, 2016

BOY Almeida, N1 by Libby Purves

STREETS OF LONDON, SNAKING TO NOWHERE…   The boy of the title  is Liam: gormless and runty, lost and unnoticed , scion of a demographic much discussed right now. For he's a whi…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:01PM[SHARE]
Sunday, April 10, 2016

LES BLANCS " National Theatre by Libby Purves

This play is not about the American backwash from the slave era, but a shattering, important take on Colonial Africa, an unnamed country on the edge of revolution and independence. It is by …

SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:56AM[SHARE]
Friday, April 8, 2016

INVINCIBLE Guildford, then Touring by Libby Purves

THE STATE OF ENGLAND:  FUNNY, BEAUTIFUL, SAD      AND TOURING!    Some issues do best as satirical or farcical comedies: English class division, illicit sex, misunderstan…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:40AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, April 6, 2016

THE CARETAKER Old Vic SE1 by Libby Purves

SPALL, SQUALOR, AND 1960     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…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 5, 2016

X Royal Court, SW1 by Libby Purves

TO BOLDLY GO 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…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:23PM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 31, 2016

HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES Theatre Royal, Haymarket SW1 by Libby Purves

THE CLASSIC COMEDY OF CLASS AND CONFUSION       We're back in the 1960's, and how! Beyond the jolly geometric curtain a bygone world revives. Shiny pink plastic boots, a r…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:16PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, March 29, 2016

RIGHT NOW Bush, W12 by Libby Purves

A CREEPY BRILLIANCE  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…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PM[SHARE]
Monday, March 28, 2016

SHADOWLANDS Touring by Libby Purves

HEAD, HEART, AND HOPEFULNESS   "God" says Christopher Riley, donnishly, "has a severely limited intellect". Jack Lewis, his Magdalen colleague, demurs with affectionate impatience, secu…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:33PM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 24, 2016

REASONS TO BE HAPPY Hampstead Theatre, NW3 by Libby Purves

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…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:16PM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off