All stories by Friends on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

OPENING NIGHT Gielgud, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

HOW TO WASTE A STELLAR CAST       Sheridan Smith is not only a box-office draw  but a rare and genuine talent:  two decades a star  on screen and stage, musicals and drama:  phenomena…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:27AM
Sunday, March 24, 2024

MIND MANGLER Apollo, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

MAGIC . ALWAYS BETTER WHEN DISASTROUS.          God bless Mischief Theatre.  Eleven years ago this coming May I saw THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG in the tiny downstairs space at Trafalgar S…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:01PM
Friday, March 22, 2024

RED PITCH Sohoplace W1 by Libby Purves and Friends

KIDS WITH A KICK IN THEM        There’s been an interlockof themes in theatre lately: DEAR ENGLAND at the NT displaying Gareth Southgate’s work in fostering the openness and emotiona…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:31AM
Thursday, March 21, 2024

FAITH HEALER Lyric, Hammersmith by Libby Purves and Friends

HOPE, HEART, HARDSHIP    Brian Friel’s 1979 remarkable play stands on its own, offering a kind of depressive beauty: beneath the story of one ramshackle troubled couple it is a meditatio…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AM

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE Wiltons, E1 by Libby Purves and Friends

RO$$INI BONANZA!  Guest reviewer Dean Thompson finds much in a small space… Opera lovers or new to opera will love this!  So, get on your horse and gallop over to see Charles Court Opera…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AM
Monday, March 18, 2024

STONES IN HIS POCKETS      Eastern Angles touring by Libby Purves and Friends

A CELLULOID INVASION   This  was at first a startling choice:  Eastern Angles’ tradition is generally, as it heroically tours night-by-night across the eastern counties,   to programme…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:52PM
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

LONDON ZOO Southwark Playhouse SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

BOARDROOM BEASTS     This may break all records for the smartest costumes ever at the Southwark’s smallest space: six irreproachable business suits, including two sets of tweed-chic fema…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:26AM
Tuesday, March 12, 2024

GUYS AND DOLLS …reprise & birthday! by Libby Purves and Friends

A FRESH CAST, ONE YEAR ON  Can it really be a whole year since, with theatre still gallantly recovering from Covid, Nicholas Hytner rolled the dice and opted to offer us some razzle dazzle?…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:40AM
Friday, March 8, 2024

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS New Wolsey, Ipswich & touring by Libby Purves and Friends

PLANT FOOD PEOPLE FROM THE PAST        I missed this first time round, due to the babysitting years, so it was grand to catch up. It’s a 1980’s  revival,  a spoof on  1960’s sci…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AM
Thursday, March 7, 2024

NYE Olivier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A MAVERICK MINISTER         There’s another play to be written about Aneurin Bevan,  stubborn founder of the National Health Service: perhaps a more contentious one, or a fantasy in w…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AM
Wednesday, March 6, 2024

TURNING THE SCREW Kings Head, Islington by Libby Purves and Friends

ONCE BRITTEN TWICE SHY?    The late David Hemmings, one of Britten’s mentored, worshipped boy sopranos, was unforgettable aged 12  as the original MIles in the composer’s  terrifying…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PM

THE LONELY LONDONERS.  Jermyn St Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

THE WINDRUSH WARRIORS       Moses’  crowded bedsit  is where the new ones turn up off the boat train, wanting to know how to do London;  he can tell them names like Clapham -“not C…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:49AM
Monday, March 4, 2024

The Magic Flute Coliseum, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

GUEST REVIEWER AND OPERABUFF DEAN THOMPSON LOVES ENO’S LATEST Ingenious – Dazzling – Hilarious! If you haven’t seen The Magic Flute before, then this is the one to see; if you have…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:46AM
Friday, March 1, 2024

BEN AND IMO Swan, Stratford upon Avon by Libby Purves and Friends

CORONATION, COMMISSION, COLLABORATION            You need not be a selfish pig to be an artist of genius,  but there’s no question that it often helps.  Occurs, anyway.  In Mark R…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:10AM
Thursday, February 29, 2024

NACHTLAND. Young Vic SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

AN ATTIC WARNING      Fasten your seat belts for a bracingly odd German play by Marius von Mayenburg; hold on tight as it veers  in a switchback weirdness, which  I for one ended up tho…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47PM
Wednesday, February 28, 2024

CABLE STREET Southwark Playhouse SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

THEY SHALL NOT PASS    Given the current swell of antisemitism there was a heartstopping moment from Jez Unwin as Yitzhak Scheinberg,  patriarch of a hardworking East End Jewish family wh…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:26PM

THE HUMAN BODY Donmar, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

1948 AND ALL THAT    Right now, the birth of the NHS in 1948 is more than appropriate to write about (there’s another play about Nye Bevan next week).  For as the most jaded doctor pred…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AM
Tuesday, February 20, 2024

DOUBLE FEATURE.     Hampstead Theatre  by Libby Purves and Friends

WANNA BE IN MOVIES? REALLY? BRRRR! We open in a chilly Suffolk cottage in the rain (I  am tonight probably the only person here to have come direct from a chilly Suffolk cottage, in rain. C…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:31AM
Friday, February 16, 2024

DEAR OCTOPUS.      Lyttelton, SE1  by Libby Purves and Friends

TENTACLES  STRETCHING INTO PAST AND FUTURE     Electricity is coming to the village but the elderly Randolphs wont bother, preferring the paraffin lamplight of their forebears.  Their ho…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:46PM
Thursday, February 15, 2024

JUST FOR ONE DAY.  Old vic. SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

WHEN THE BOOMERS WERE ROCKIN’ ALL OVER THE WORLD...     “We were there!” cry the cast of John O’Farrell’s jukebox tribute to the 1985 Live Aid concert. Memories undimmed nearly f…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PM
Wednesday, February 14, 2024

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.       Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford upon Avon by Libby Purves and Friends

FAIRYTALE AS FESTIVAL      “The lunatic, the lover and the poet”  are all served in any Midsummer Night’s dream.   Here the first two get most traction,  the poetry least (until …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AM
Monday, February 12, 2024

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE Coliseum, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

    LYRICAL, FARCICAL, PERFECT Figaro, rascally wigmaker and foam-flinging wet-shaver, is  basically the first rapper, isnt he? Staccato eloquence at speed, braggart confidence in breech…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PM
Wednesday, February 7, 2024

THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA Harold Pinter Theatre, SW1 by Libby Purves and Friends

 AMERICAN DREAMS IN FADING BLACKPOOL     Suddenly within a fortnight come two very classy new plays,  funny and thoughtful and moving beyond the ordinary. Moreover, in a tiny revolution …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PM
Friday, February 2, 2024

BRONCO BILLY Charing Cross Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

THAT OL’TIME WESTERN DREAM OF 1979 I have a weakness for this  little theatre under the arches and its Players’ Bar.  Honouring a music-hall history, and with some of the cheapest stal…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:10AM
Thursday, February 1, 2024

TILL THE STARS COME DOWN Dorfman, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

SMALL PEOPLE,  BIG PLAY          A hot summer wedding-day.  The bride Sylvia is a bag of nerves, big sister Hazel competently combing and marshalling her  teenage and smaller daught…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:07AM
Thursday, January 25, 2024

THE FROGS. Royal and Derngate, Northampton by Libby Purves and Friends

UNFROGGETTABLE MOMENTS IN THE UNDERWORLD    Aitor Basauri does not need to be framed in a 20ft-high giant puppet frog in order to be funny,  but blissful overkill is part of the pleasure …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:54AM
Wednesday, January 24, 2024

NORTHANGER ABBEY Orange Tree, Richmond by Libby Purves and Friends

A DANCE AROUND AUSTEN’S LEGACY The book is known and loved enough: Jane Austen’s first full novel,  written with satirical youthful wit but long laid aside unpublished. It gleefully sho…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PM
Tuesday, January 23, 2024

THE MOST PRECIOUS OF GOODS Marylebone Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

LEST ANYONE FORGET..    Storytime!  Before a tangled treescape  Samantha Spiro sits with a book on her lap.   Across the simple stage a few notes from Gemma Rosefield’s ‘cello settl…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PM
Wednesday, January 17, 2024

KIN Lyttelton, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

BORDERS AND BRUTALITIES, Maybe I shouldnt review what is essentially physical-theatre. I have no dance-cred, and I was pleased to be warned years ago by the great Benedict Nightingale, when …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:15PM
Tuesday, January 16, 2024

DON’T DESTROY ME Arcola, Dalston by Libby Purves and Friends

WAR’S LONG SHADOW            I have a taste for  “Forgotten” plays of  well-made realism, illustrating  how it actually felt to live in Britain through now-distant decades.  …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AM
Friday, January 12, 2024

THE GOOD JOHN PROCTOR Jermyn St Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

BEFORE THE SALEM TERROR       This week, to little acclaim,  the Ambassadors opened Tbe Enfield Haunting,  a play centred on the spooky hysteria of troubled teenage girls.. The followi…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards