Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

Had a fab day of film overdose with three very different films First was Elton John: Never too late, the new documentary which takes a retrospective look at his career with the backdrop of his personal life.. Produced by David Furnish, this was never going to be a hatchet job and some parts of John’s biography are a bit glossed over but that didn’t detract from the overall film which spends a lot of time in the early years and with some great archive material and some moving snippets I had never seen before,  A great companion piece to Rocketman which was much more focused on his personal life  The biggest annoyance was a couple behind us, obviously fans but who thought they were in their living room, chatting their way through the interesting bits and occasionally singing along.  A Disney+ production,  I hope and assume it will be on streaming soon, but great to see it in such a big space. Next was The Wild Robot, an animation with some huge names doing the voice work. Lupita Nyong

I loved Alexander Zeldin’s earlier play The Confessions , so I was really keen to see what he had done with the tale of Antigone, reworked for a modern blended suburban family. The set is a house being renovated to ‘bring in the light’ with walls knocked down and swishing doors to the garden demonstrated to everyone, all very 'Grand Designs'.  But the house used to belong to Chris’s brother and it is being renovated to get rid of the past and move on.   As part of moving on, Chris (Tobias Menzies) has decided that it is time to scatter the ashes to get his brother finally out of the house, and is determined to do so.   One of his nieces Issy (Alison Oliver) is already living in the house with memories of before and they are joined by Annie (Emma D'Arcy), her sister, who hasn’t let go of an ounce of her grief and has decided that her Dad's ashes should stay in the house. The intransigence and battles between Chris and Annie takes some gasp inducing turns as they tussle w

  I cannot lie, the big draw for me of this Beckett classic was Ben Whishaw and he and the whole cast didn't disappoint, doing a great job of bringing what can be a pretty bleak play to life. Set in a colourless blasted landscape with a nearly dead tree as the only landmark, Vladimir (Ben Whishaw) and Estragon (Lucian Msamati)  are waiting for Godot, their unseen overseer.  Passing through is Pozzo (Jonathan Slinger), and his bound and whipped lacky going by the name of Lucky (Tom Eddon).  In the first half, the long pauses broke up the tragicomedy of the two men trying to find interesting ways to pass the time in an empty, bleak and meaningless world.  As I think is deliberate, the wait for the interval felt interminable at times with the pointless of it all.  Interestingly, the second half picked up a bit in pace, as we have the existential angst of human existence laid out for us.  I really enjoyed the dynamic between Msamati and Whishaw, holding hands like two children steeling

  Another last minute bargain ticket, this time in the dress circle with a theoretically restricted view because of a pillar, but actually there was a great view. This play about love, fidelity and writing is a tricksy thing, with plays within a play partly about writing a play.  And then there are relationships overlapping, both real and unreal, and with the lines often blurred, and pretty much all of the characters as both actors in the plays as well as ‘real’ life.   The overlapping love triangles in this work really well to explore what is real love anyway.  James McArdle plays Henry, who feels like a stand in for Stoppard, as a playwright, with a successful play about a breaking marriage, while in the process of breaking his own.  Meanwhile Bel Powley as Annie treads a tight path as the lover then wife of Henry, who has some different interpretations of love.  Is love about making one commitment and sticking with it, or bargaining, and remaking that commitment day by day?  We have

‘AJ’ (Chanel Waddock) is a goalkeeper, number 2 in the women’s team with an opportunity to move up to ‘1’.  Angelina (Shannon Hayes) is preparing a pitch in her corporate job that might bag her the promotion she is after.  Through the 65 minutes of this play, we see the overt and more subtle challenges these women face just trying to make the most of their lives.  They have plenty going on already and then they both find they need an abortion.  Not as graphic as The Years , in performance at least, but unsparing in the language and discussion about the practicalities and pressures they face and the ramifications of the decision.   It was great to see another play talking about this, at a time when what should be the most basic of women's rights has become contested again. I wasn't convinced by the final reveal which felt a bit clichéd, but for showing the subtle but very real challenges that women still face, this was very nicely done.  I loved the chessboard type movements aro

  Seeing the first of these plays last was not necessarily the best way to go about this, but it still worked.  Another on-the-day ticket, this time up in the first balcony but with an excellent view. ‘Michael' (an excellent Thomas Coombes) appears to be a stereotypical white working class man, no longer young or married. His Dad has just died as England lost the Euros on penalties and he is trying to make sense of that, his life, and also his Dad.  Michael's dad represents a kind of Englishness - East End, Leighton Orient fan, full of nationalist racist rhetoric, tribal, a Brexit fan, but also kind to his son’s Black best friend Delroy and his mum. Keen on ‘tradition’ in both good and bad senses, but also community minded.   As we find over the course of the performance, both Michael and his dad are a lot more than the caricatures would suggest.  Coombes doesn’t stop for breath throughout the 105 minutes on stage, and it’s a powerful performance, leaping about the performance

First, let’s get it out there that I think Paapa Essiedu is an impressive actor so I was really pleased to get an on-the-day ticket for a second row seat to see his performance as Delroy.  I really like the auditorium at Soho Place, I don’t think there is a bad seat anywhere, but this was a particularly  good view although sometimes a bit uncomfortably close to the action. This 100 minute long monologue is intense, even more so in this intense space with eye contact possible with every member of the audience, adding to the engagement, or maybe complicity we feel.  And as ‘Delroy’, or maybe Essiedu, may well ask you a specific question and expect an answer we’d better be paying attention. I have somehow been seeing this trilogy of state of the nation plays in reverse order.  I saw the third (Closing Time) last year, but I still need to book to see the first one (Michael), annoyingly I missed Rafe Spall as Michael in the first iteration because I was ill.  Doing it in reverse order means