Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

Murderbot - this is a sci-fi comedy drama with a Deadpool sensibility.  Murderbot is a security robot that has developed free will and if the company find out he will be scrapped.  He finds humans incredibly irritating but if he lets them die he will be scrapped.  Therefore he keep his clients (a well meaning but slightly incompetent bunch of scientists) alive. He’s addicted to watching schlocky sci fi series and spends most of his time watching those and using them to understand human behaviour. Silly and funny but also endearing,  this makes me laugh and the episodes are all less than 30 minutes long which is another bonus as far as I am concerned. ( series streaming on Appletv+)   Heretic - I am loving High Grant’s post romcom career.  He plays a brilliant creepy monster in this horror thriller.  Witty and smart with plenty of stuff to unpick.   It had an annoyingly open metaphysical sort of ending which I think was supposed to be meanin...

 A story about a Black seamstress in the early part of the 20th century, this is a small and delicately woven piece.  A small ensemble cast, with an excellent Samira Wiley in the centre, unfold the story carefully.  Esther is 35 and fears she is left on the shelf, but she is saving money through her work sewing gorgeous undergarments for her female clientele, and she plans to open a beauty parlour with the money one day.    But out of the blue come letters from George, a man she has never met, currently working on building the Panama canal.  Through her friends and clients helping her with the letters, a romance develops despite their relationship only coming from letters.  Alongside this is a sweet and unspoken romance with a Jewish fabric salesman (Alex Waldmann), wooing Esther with ever more gorgeous fabrics.  But this delicate little romance comes to nothing when Esther marries George at the end of the first half. The second half is packed wit...

An adaptation and translation  of a Japanese play, this small but affecting production makes the most of the tiny space at the Park Theatre with a massive screen taking up the full width and height of the back wall.   The play is about a small boy setting off on a quest to try to find where his dad has gone after he died, since his mum tells him that dad has become a star. Shotaro becomes obsessed with trying to find out how that would have happened.  The narrative, as much as there is one, consists of Yoko (Millie Hikasa), Shotaro's mother trying to find where where her son has gone, meeting characters along the way and finding out what they each think happens after death.  Each of the characters are well drawn and likeable in their own right, bringing laughs and sometimes a more adult perspective on what often feels like a quite childlike story.  I loved the puppetry for the central character Shotaro and some of the scenes with the puppetry, full ensemble...

This is a revival of the 2011 play about the impact of a series of real life murders by a serial killer in Ipswich during 2006-7.  The play opens with a 'Community in Bloom' competition in London Road including a visit from the mayor. During the first half of the play the narrative focuses on the nervousness and suspicion in the road in the wake of five murders of women working as prostitutes in the London Road area and the arrest of a neighbour also living on the road.  I found this part quite frustrating as the voices were mainly of the residents, who are scared, suspicious of each other, but also pleased that the police are now taking an interest and that there is no longer prostitution in the area.  There's a glaring silence where the voices of the women are missing during that first half. In the second half though, along with an excruciatingly long silence to focus on the women victims (the play just stops) we then get some voices of the women, or at least those who ...

Mountainhead - I saw a preview screening, followed by Edith Bowman interviewing Jesse Armstrong the writer, producer and director, previously the creative genius behind Succession and Peep Show .  This is a very funny but bleak look at what could happen if Techbro billionaires  are allowed to do whatever they want.  Super alpha male, full of their own importance and genius, the world almost literally at their feet, we spend a weekend with them in a mountain retreat while the world burns due to a new social media launch which sends fake content rolling around the world.  These guys think they have the solutions but are only interested if it will actually benefit them personally, and because of their playground level of rivalry things escalate badly. The title is obviously a play on Fountainhead, the novel which champions the rights of individual genius against the needs of the ordinary people in the world (It’s recommended by Robbie the selfish asshole in Dirty Danc...

  A Terence Rattigan play from 1952 doesn’t sound that appealing until you add Tamsin Greig into the mix and it suddenly became a must.  Surprisingly, although  it is pretty much of its time, I found it more modern than some of the kitchen sink dramas that pretty much swept Rattigan and his types of play away into history, for a while at least. A story about a woman who loves her younger lover too much and her husband not enough, and with neither of them loving her the way she wants to be loved, this is a pretty sad play, but despite opening with Hester’s suicide attempt, it’s also pretty funny, and not always in a bleak way! I read that there are some parallels with Rattigans own life where an ex lover killed themselves after leaving him for another man.  That's pretty sad in itself, and the play is very thoughtful about the impact of not being loved enough or as you wish to be loved, something that affects all of the main characters. Tamsin Greig is fantastic in th...

  At the Donmar, this revival of Patrick Mather’s play about masculinity, gambling,and fathers and sons  is sharp and properly funny, although all versions of these men are lying to themselves as well as everyone else  Women are hardly relevant in this at all as the men banter and argue and their different relationships and motivations are uncovered.   Stephen  (Daniel Lapaine) owns a restaurant and runs a Sunday night poker night after hours for his staff but really as a way of connection with his gambling addicted son, Carl (a fragile Kasper Hilton-Hille).  Meanwhile Chef Sweeney (Theo Barklem-Biggs)knows he has a gambling problem and tries to resist so he can spend his money with his daughter.  Frankie (Alfie Allen) is cocky and a bad loser but wants to become a professional poker player.  Ash (Brendan Coyle in his tough guy mode) is an already a professional gambler and second father figure to Carl , although we find that he is proba...