All articles by Libby Purves
WORTH SINGING ALONG TO? Ask ourselves in all honesty: did we all schlepp out to Richmond for press night because national-treasure Dame Maureen Lipman, at 80, is doing eight s…
THE ELDERLY ENDGAME We are seated in a big arena, on three sides of a care-home sitting-room, clearly secure – staff tap door keypads – designed for the containment of demen…
A SWELL PARTY, EVENTUALLY We “Call the Midwife” fans all suspected there was more pizazz to nurse Trixie than bicycling round Poplar in the 1950s, and indeed Helen George always was …
HOME AGAIN IN TRIUMPH Can it really be nearly twenty years since this show about WW1 galloped into world theatre history on this stage? A maverick experiment with two life-size pu…
THE SAD SERIOUS COMEDY OF DEATH A Devon cottage kitchen, opening to a tangled spring garden: beyond this idyll a semi- abstract tangle of branches around a great circle of sky: …
A FUNNY SHOW HAPPENENED ON THE WAY TO THE COLISEUM Ancient Greece is suffering drought and near-famine, and on a small island (population 16 and a half) prayers to Dionysius (“…
THREE WOMEN AND A DISTANT QUEEN Ava Pickett’s breathlessly exciting début play won, at the Almeida, both a prestigious prize and mixed reviews. As a first-timer, seeing its t…
FREAK ALONG WITH ANCIENT GREEKS The Greek gods, with their legends , family rifts and seduction of hapless mortals, are irresistible to all who love dramatic retelli…
SAD HEARTS AND SHOWBIZ The play begins in a pure music-hall moment: below the stage a hammeringly jolly piano, onto it a capering leg-show chorus and sparklers, ushering…
AFTER THE SHOOTING Despite the title, Anna Yates’ setting in an episcopalian church room full of calm skylight, and one effective moment near the end, Fran Kranz’ tense 105-minute p…
A MUSICAL IS BORN…OUT OF POP”S PAST I liked this rackety, brassy, exhilarating banger of a show: a cartoonish bit of history, a jukebox musical with a heart of gold .…
ETHICS AND EVASIONS It’s a cluttered upper room, overcrowded with grand old furniture, a gramophone, harp, oddities like fencing foils and a home-built valve radio. The sense is o…
UNIVERSAL , INTIMATE, TRUE Sometimes it’s more than worth it to flog irritably through a London strike day, make it without even time for a drink but find someth…
IMPRESSIONS AND OBSESSIONSÂ Â Â The old `Players' Theatre has a good eye of oddball new musicals, cheap enough to sample before anyone's train home. And here off-Broadway's Carmel Owe…
A SHUDDER FROM THE PAST I came to this fresh from admiring two 76-year-olds , Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep, being painfully cool and haughty in a trailer plugging Devil Wears Prada 2. Â …
FRIENDSHIP, BRILLIANCE, DOUBT Â Â Â Â The universe as a bundle of unknowable of approximates:Â Relativity and Complementarity, Uncertainty theory, quantum mechanics, particles …
A HOUSE OF ANCIENT SHAME     What terrible secrets lie in an impressive yet spooky mansion, with artful descending ceilings and a trapdoor designed by Jon Bausor ? We…
RUPERT AND BRENDA Â Â Couldn't miss this piece of 40th anniversary history by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky because I had a very small "Â infinitestimal "Â dog in this fight. I wa…
  CRY HAVOC!  Director Tamara Harvey, who gave us that beautiful, thoughtful PERICLES last year (also starring Alfred Enoch),  is not one to interpret Henry V in the stormingl…
TOO DEEP FOR TEARS Perhaps this imagining of the young Vincent gains extra power after the emotional hit of the recent Van Gogh at Arles exhibition; starry nights and wonder lie fresh in…
REACH FOR THE LIMITLESS STARS    This 70-minute squib was a big Fringe hit, though one clenched reviewer suggested that it could only appeal to those who love physics. This f…
SECOND HOME HOLIDAY HELL IN OLD RUSSIA    Watch a Chekhov play, and however deep the characters' despair and disappointment you feel the author's love, just as you do f…
MYSTICISM AND MISCHIEF     This extraordinary show from Kadimah Yiddish Theatre, based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's story (and absolutely not with the Streisand movie…
BROKEN HEARTS AND MACAROONS: A DISTANT WAR CLOSE TO HOME Â Â Â Â Â How is it for a family to be a symbol, focus and vortex of murderous global disharmony? Â The Rosenbergs k…
A DARKNESS FROM THE PAST, WITH MODERN ECHOESÂ Â Â Â Â Â Fittingly in ou age of outing, condemnation and cancellation there have within a twelvemonth been three plays about t…
1939: GLOBAL MOMENT , INTIMATE PAIN    There are some tremendous moments in the last ten minutes of this late-period Arthur Miller play: some from Pearl Chanda as Sylvia,�…
A THOUGHTFUL ANGER Â Â Â Â We need to know and feel something beyond the daily global news; sometimes theatre can place us carefully and mercilessly in the room and try to make us…
A 1920's BIRD OF PARADISE IN THE HENCOOP Â Â Trust Trevor Nunn to make this a bit of an event: a rarely-seen Noel Coward play set with ferocious accuracy and style in its birth-year 192…
THE MARY ANN WHO BECAME GEORGE ELIOT Â Â Â It's 1842; Bird Grove is the handsome house near Coventry which Robert Evans bought in his retirement from managing a grand estate. With he…
PEERLESS, COMPLETE WITH PEERESSES   Melodious romantic yearning and extreme nonsense, Victoriana sending itself up in rap-speed pattering rhyme and lovesick fairies invading the …
GAGS BEFORE GRAVITAS  They're a national treasure:Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey, inventions of Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay long before the age of Spads and WhatsApps. The TV shows…
WICKED ECHOES FROM ANOTHER DEPRESSION      Well, here's something oddly familiar! A legendary international financier with charm, vast wealth, grubby fingers in many p…
This is an adapted version of a piece I wrote for The Times on 19 January. Following Joanna Carrick's funeral on Friday, it seems right to put it up here, because theatre pioneers and projec…
SLY USEFUL OBSERVATION…MARRIAGE OF EQUALS Noel Coward was a lad of 18 when he finished this very adult portrait of a marriage in trouble, invalided out of the army, nervous and tuber…
A VERY GREAT TALENT TO AMUSE     Rival psychopathies emerge from the first moments of "Cornley Drama Society" as Chris (Daniel Fraser) and Robert (Henry Lewis) face off a…
OH DEAR…   Event theatre! New from NY!   It got Tony and Pulitzer nominations, and smart Broadway people called it "heartwarming: and "best crafted and exacting…
UNDER AN ALIEN TREE   The suffering and the pity of Gaza affects us all: bitter division on the streets, hysterical demonstrations feeding a violently rising antisemitism. And…
   "The woods are lovely, dark and deep…" " They certainly are when designed by Tom Scutt . And Jordan Fein's glorious new production will, I think, conver…
DRINK DEEP OF GLORIUMPTIOUS FROBSCOTTLE      The RSC holiday season show offers a rising generation some proper theatrical wonder, away from banal screen CGI and a…
CINDERELLA AND THE MATZO BALL.     JW3. , Finchley Rd L'CHAIM ! TO LIFE, AND PANTOMIME JOKES   It's not often that you get to hiss and boo Prince Ch…
JUST FOR KIDS? CONTRARIWISE! WE ARE ALL ALICE    In a fleeting moment of meta-theatre when the monstrous crow (well, umbrella) had the house shouting "Behind you!", Tweedl…
 HELLO AGAIN SAILORS   This is one of ENO's beloved triumphs, the one which got some of us through the latter Covid years in frivolous merriment. For back in gloryIn 2021…
A GHOSTLESS DICKENS TREAT FOR CHRISTMAS This is wonderful: a three-hander adaptation by Abigail Pickard Price, with the Guildford Shakespeare Company. They're well up to the new-…
LADIES WHO LURCH The Lord Chamberlain took a bit of handling to let this play's louche presumptions of extramarital liaisons be flaunted onstage: and one public morality campaigner shout…
 A BEAR WHO DESERVES HIS STATION   This could have been awful , a desecration of the children's favourite which became a national icon of reassurance when he sat down to tea …
GRIEF, GUILT, CONSCIENCE Â Â Â A great bright disc of moon overhangs the old tree in the storm, as it falls in the tumult of sound that could be war. Â It's 1948:Â Arthur Mille…
ABSURD, TRANSCENDENT, JOYFUL Â Â Â Â Forget Ancient Greece and the films inspired by the suitors of royal Parthenope, this is Handel in comic-opera mood (one can't always be writi…
  A VERY CIVIL CRIME Meet Robert, a retired barrister, working in a charity shop as we meet him, cautiously sniffing trousers and appreciating candelabras. Nothing unusual there i…
AN INNOCENCE OF WITCHES     A brand-new musical always stirs hope, especially when we're promised voices like Gabrielle Brooks (magnetically magnificent as Rita in Ge…
NOT AT ALL A DRAG… Candy-coloured prettiness frames a 1890s world, of bored girls in flounces longing for escape from guardians, lovesick young men not averse to heiresses, a…
