All stories by Libby Purves on BroadwayStars

Friday, February 14, 2025

UNICORN Garrick Theatre WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

A TRICYCLE MADE FOR THREE?     After Mike Bartlett’s COCK – where one of a gay male couple falls for a girl – I wrote  that the poor sap of a hero thinks he he choosing a sexuality …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:52AM
Thursday, February 13, 2025

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CAD Watermill, nr Newbury by Libby Purves and Friends

A BRITISH BASTARD STALKS THROUGH HISTORY     What’s to be done about truly awful people:  amoral, selfishly irresponsible, arrogant and greedy? A time-honoured British approach is t…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:05AM
Tuesday, February 11, 2025

CHURCHILL IN MOSCOW Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond by Libby Purves and Friends

   A GREAT TURNING POINT, CAUGHT IN ASPIC   It is 1942.  Prime minister Churchill has travelled to Moscow to meet Stalin.  Each side has a problem at home with voices wanting to cut a d…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:38PM

OUTLYING ISLANDS Jermyn St Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

WILD SHORES IN WARTIME     Risk taking a gap between seeing David Greig plays  and you forget how downright louche things are likely to turn out. (I had lately revelled in Prudencia Hart …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:36PM
Monday, February 10, 2025

THE YEARS. Harold Pinter Theatre WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

A FEMALE EVOLUTION, FRANK AND FINE First salute the cast: Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindraand Harmony Rose-Bremner, for an unpretentiously powerful tour de force. Ea…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:41AM
Thursday, February 6, 2025

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO Coliseum, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

    ABSURDITY AND SUBLIMITY After the glorious Parisian detail of the revived Rigoletto here ,  Johannes  Schutz’ spare bland box with only four flat doors is an opposite take on how …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:56AM
Tuesday, February 4, 2025

THE YEARS Harold Pinter Theatre, WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A FEMALE EVOLUTION,  FRANK AND FINE  First salute the cast: Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner, for an unpretentiously powerful tour de forc…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:42PM
Tuesday, January 28, 2025

THE DOUBLE ACT Arcola, E8 by Libby Purves and Friends

FUNNY ABOUT THE UNFUNNY         Billy Bash,   rated the third most offensive comedian in Britain,  was once the dominant partner in Biddle and Bash.  He’s still on tour, God help us…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:36PM
Thursday, January 23, 2025

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS Theatre Royal Bath & touring by Libby Purves and Friends

A DARKER THOMAS CROMWELL          Edward Bennett as Thomas Cromwell is a proper thug:  everyone’s memory of the  HR-outplacement weasel who starts the sacking meeting with soft-soap…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:05AM
Saturday, January 18, 2025

A GOOD HOUSE Royal Court, SW1 by Libby Purves and Friends

 SUBURBAN ANGST IN THE NEW SA There’s nothing like a tight, awkward comedy of neighbourhood strife, where neighbourly differences reveal unexpected fissures within the couples, and tiny p…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46AM
Friday, January 17, 2025

KYOTO Sohoplace W1 by Libby Purves and Friends

AT THE  SUMMIT OF RAGE AND HOPE         Fear not, this isn’t a Greta-gloom lecture but  a lively, imaginative, borderline wild reconstruction of  the years culminating in COP3 clim…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:28AM
Friday, January 10, 2025

TITANIQUE.   Criterion theatre. W1 by Libby Purves and Friends

NO SINKING FEELINGS HERE, GIRLFRIEND Call it a jukebox musical if you like, but only if the jukebox came alive, went rogue and started tottering around the stage on rubber feet hurling insul…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:15AM
Tuesday, December 17, 2024

THE INVENTION OF LOVE Hampstead Theatre NW3 by Libby Purves and Friends

SACRED MONSTERS IN THE UNDERWORLD Deep darkness within the U-shaped seating,:   into it on wheels glides the dark gondola:  Charon the ferryman, after millennia punting to and fro across t…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:32AM
Saturday, December 14, 2024

PINOCCHIO redrosechain, Avenue Theatre Ipswich by Libby Purves and Friends

A HIGH-KICKING WOODEN WONDER        Serious fun, this.  Never  liked the Disney Pinocchio, or even in childhood the over-preachy Carlo Collodi book about the defiant wooden puppet who …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57AM
Thursday, December 12, 2024

TWELFTH NIGHT.      Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon by Libby Purves and Friends

PRESENT MIRTH HATH PRESENT LAUGHTER. AND MELANCHOLY. AND FALSE NOSES     In a play as familiar as this it is small touches that spring fresh life.  Like the moment when the fool Feste def…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:48PM
Wednesday, December 11, 2024

THE PRODUCERS Menier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

SPRINGTIME FOR…EVERYONE        Joyful, headlong and full-hearted, here comes sacred outrage.  If director Patrick Marber and the Menier had been minded to issue wet ‘trigger warning…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AM

GOLDIE FROCKS AND THE BEAR MITZVAH         JW3 CENTRE, Finchley Rd by Libby Purves and Friends

MAZELTOV!  JEWISH PANTO STRIKES AGAIN       Goldie Frocks, rightful heiress to an East End schmutter workshop, has been enslaved by the evil Calvin Brine, whose  behemoth of too-small c…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:45AM
Sunday, December 8, 2024

BALLET SHOES Olivier, SE1 by Libby Purves and Friends

FEARED IT MIGHT BE TUTU MUCH, BUT NO…     I immediately fell for Frankie Bradshaw’s set: a two- storey house lined with fossil skeletons in cases, and a spirited opening in which th…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:05AM
Thursday, December 5, 2024

THE LAST DAYS OF LIZ TRUSS         White Bear, Kennington by Libby Purves and Friends

LOOK BEYOND THE LETTUCE       It is a tribute to Greg Wilkinson’s monologue play that I had not previously seen the rise and fall of Liz Truss as having a gripping dramatic line.  It h…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:31PM

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA Dominion, W1 by Libby Purves and Friends

HIGH SPIRITS, HIGH COMEDY, EVEN HIGHER HEELS       Elton John, who jumped at the idea of writing the music,  calls the 2006 film a favourite; many of us nod in blissful agreement.    B…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:55PM
Wednesday, December 4, 2024

NAPOLEON UN PETIT PANTOMIME Jermyn St Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

C’EST MAGNIFIQUE !       Napoleon, defeated at Trafalgar,  vows revenge on Britain and its  “bootlicking monoglot  monarchists”. Stalking around in breeches and bicorn hat,  Ma…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AM
Tuesday, December 3, 2024

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE Coliseum, WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

TA-RAN-TA-RA !   Mike Leigh,  a veteran better known for films, Abigail’s Party and theatrical experiments with scriptless rehearsal,  is also a dedicated devotee of the utterly scripte…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AM
Sunday, December 1, 2024

DICK WHITTINGTON and his cat Greenwich Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

THE COOLEST CAT IN LONDON. AND SOME RATS.           Here’s your traditional Christmas outing, proper panto.  No rackety popstar hype or tedious suggestive jokes from worn-out comicS…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:27PM
Friday, November 15, 2024

THE FORSYTE SAGA           Park Theatre, N4 by Libby Purves and Friends

GALSWORTHY ?  WELL WORTH SEEING      With late Victorians, there’s plenty to bite on:  a rising bourgeoisie aflame with parvenu ambition,  piety , pannier skirts ,patriarchs, an empi…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:05PM
Thursday, November 14, 2024

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Ambassadors Theatre, WC2 by Libby Purves and Friends

WISDOM IN A LIFE BACKWARDS      Forget the awful fim made from Scott Fitzgerald’s story about a life lived backwards – a man born in old age, working towards youth and infancy in reve…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:44AM
Tuesday, November 12, 2024

THE TRUTH ABOUT HARRY BECK                London Transport Museum  by Libby Purves and Friends

  A JOURNEY OF JOURNEYS      A map is a lovely thing, but sometimes practically speaking a diagram is better. And can also be lovely: especially when its useful elegance has become a fam…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:04PM
Saturday, November 9, 2024

GIANT Royal Court Theatre by Libby Purves and Friends

THE BIG  RATHER UNFRIENDLY  GIANT       Tom Maschler, legendary publisher  and once a Kindertransport child,  summed up the appeal of Roald Dahl:  his stories offer  “A glorious p…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:55AM
Friday, November 1, 2024

GUARDS AT THE TAJ. Orange Tree, Richmond by Libby Purves and Friends

1648, Agra: marble and murder, a terrible beauty     One of the worst photo-ops of Princess Diana’s collapsing marriage was that shot at the Taj Mahal, billed by romantics as “eternal …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:24AM
Thursday, October 31, 2024

SUMMER 1954 Theatre Royal Bath & TOURING by Libby Purves and Friends

LOOK BACK IN COMPASSION          The Rattigan renaissance of the last few years is more than welcome:  ever since Flare Path hit the West End fourteen years ago there seems to have bee…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:45PM

RIGOLETTO London Coliseum by Libby Purves and Friends

THE GRANDEST OF GRIEFS  Not Renaissance Mantua but New York a century past: smart bars and low dives, gangsters in fedoras. Why not ?  In any world might be a lonely jokester, missing his …

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11AM
Wednesday, October 30, 2024

OEDIPUS. Wyndhams Theatre WC1 by Libby Purves and Friends

A short catch-up on one of the season’s greats (was away..) Mark Strong is made to play great tragedy: a long powerful body,  controlled bleak intelligent  features.A figure from any age…

SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:37PM

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
Nov 17, 2024: Elf - Marquis 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