Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

 Josh O'Connor on the London stage at the Almeida theatre was never going to disappoint, so I bought our tickets on the first morning that membership booking opened, and I’m glad I did as it has been resolutely sold out for ages.  With the addition of Hayley Squires and Daniel Mays in the central cast it looked as though we were in for a treat.  Clifford Odett's play, written in 1937,  is a bit of a period piece, set during the depression as Joe Bonaparte decides to leave behind his impoverished life as a violinist in New York, and instead become a prize fighter.  Nowadays the short cut would presumably be as a social media influencer.  Daniel Mays is Tom, playing to type as Joe's initially unwilling but increasingly more enthusiastic promoter, and Hayley Squires plays Lorna Moon, Tom's mistress, wielded as a weapon to get Joe onside, but eventually, and fairly obviously, becoming part of a love triangle.  The production has more furniture and traditio...

Tip Toe - I had been putting this off because I knew it was going to be a hard watch.  The performances are all great and the message is heartfelt and one that needs to be heard although I suspect the people who need to hear it won’t be watching or listening.  David Morrisey plays Clive, the bigoted neighbour who Leo (Alan Cumming)  is convinced has a good heart.  Leo is an optimistic out and proud neighbour who chooses not to compromise with bigotry, which usually works until it doesn't.  In this time of increasing bigotry and aggression towards people who are different in any way, this was both scary and depressing,  particularly the approach taken by people who choose to hide by aping the people who would abuse them. David Morrissey does a great job of repressed anger and I found him terrifying on many occasions.  Similarly Alan Cumming as Leo is fantastic as the in-your-face loud and sure of himself man, deliberately building himself up and trying...

With a fantastic cast led by Sophie Okonedo this was always going to be an interesting evening at the Donmar Warehouse.    This adaptation of Turgenev's play was reworked by Brian Friel in the 1990s, but it still has the bare bones of pretty much any 19th century Russian play.  It's set in a country estate where family and friends are spending the summer with their staff, including the poor but bright and dashing young tutor Aleksey.  From the very start we are made aware of romantic entanglements,  Michel (Alistair Petrie) is both a friend to Natalya and her husband, but is also in love with Natalya.  Vera, the young ward of Natalya has also fallen for Aleksey (Patrick Gibson).  Meanwhile, the local GP, Shpigelsky (Daniel Rigby), may be pursuing Lizaveta (Amanda Wilkin) in a very pragmatic way whilst also pursuing Vera on behalf of an older local neighbour, Bolshintsov (Michael Hodgson) in return for promise of some horses.  And there...

I watch a lot of random stuff, following links and suggestions, and I don't tend to keep track, so I thought I would dig back through some of my browsing history over the past few weeks, to look at the links I have followed.  I can see my algorithm at work here, which is always interesting.  La Même Chose   https://youtu.be/swjGGEI_rmM?si=DW1QbRtNSdTUKuqo   This is a black and white 8 minute short film from 2024 starring the newly very bankable Connor Storrie from before he was famous and instead doing lots of interesting little arty projects with friends. This is a lovely detailed little interaction which works as a serious piece, and at the same time, a funny pisstake of a type of pretentious french film.  What really makes me smile is that lots of the fans commenting don't seem to think it's funny, so maybe it's just me, but 'give me biscuits or give me death' is excellent and I think I am going to add it to my collection of quotes to bring out when I am feel...

Letitia Wright plays Yvonne, an ambitious Black journalist in this play about journalism and journalistic integrity.  It’s set in 1990’s America, and a white man lost in a car in a rundown area of town is attacked and murdered, his wife describing the murderer as a Black man.  So it sets itself up as a bit of a whodunnit, with the newsroom well placed to investigate.  Yvonne is keen to cover the story but has just started her job in the Black newsroom and she is put on local Black stories rather than the bigger one she is interested in. Her boss is Pat (played by Lorraine Toussaint - loved her in Orange is the New Black ) a war weary veteran of the civil rights movement with Neil (Ashley Thomas), as her enthusiastic sidekick who is convinced the wife is responsible for the murder.  The last of the main quartet of the cast is Wilf Scolding as Jeff, Yvonne's rich boyfriend, who also happens to own the paper. Despite setting us up with a mystery, this is really about wh...

  Another night out at a period play, this time from 1969.  This domestic farce is still very funny, operating like clockwork as it should.  The premise is that Frank (Roger Allum), an ineffectual but well meaning man, decides to intervene when his wife explains that she missed their anniversary as someone in his work team is having an affair.  Being the genial, if incompetent boss that he is, and totally misunderstanding the situation, he tries to help resolve the perceived marital difficulties of Mary and William, Bob and Theresa, causing highly entertaining chaos.  The play is in the round, with the set ingeniously split between the overlapping homes of the Featherstones and the  Phillips. which enables  some excellent scenes where the couples have phone calls, conversations and even more entertaining, two concurrent dinner parties, without noticing the others are there. It is definitely funny, but some of the relationship dynamics are really dated,...

I had a trip into London on a day off, and managed to squeeze in a few exhibitions plus some theatre.  Abigail's Party I am going to start with the final visit of the day which was to see the Mike Leigh classic, Abigail's Party, revived with Tamzin Outhwaite as Bev, the monstrous hostess from the 1970s.  One of the amazing things about this was, although she opened with a slightly nasal intonation reminiscent of Alison Steadman's defining performance, she very quickly moved away and made Bev her own.   Bev is still a monster, perhaps a little more vicious than I remember, but that might be because the 1970's culture on display here was even more jarring than I remember it being when first produced.  A clever touch is to make Tony and Angela, their new neighbours who are visiting, of Asian heritage, adding an additional frisson to the class and other topics that fall out of Bev and Laurence's mouths. Tony and Ange are as awkward as any of us would be dealing with...