Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

As it's been Pride month I have been rewatching a few old favourites - so starting this month’s roundup with some suggestions:   Heated Rivalry -  award winning, classy, complex romance set in a toxic environment. Crafted as if it was a 6 hour movie, with fabulous writing, cinematography, soundtrack and performances which absolutely deliver on its carefully structured story arc. It chucks the traditional male gaze out the window in the beautifully shot intimate scenes, and if episode 5 doesn't have you standing on your sofa cheering, there is something wrong with you*.  You do need to put your phone away though, trust that the first few episodes are worth the later payoff, and properly watch, otherwise you will miss so many of the subtle layers (s eries, streaming on Sky/NowTV)   All of Us Strangers - A reworking of a Japanese novel, this atmospheric thriller/ghost story/romance explores grief and loneliness alongside all sorts of love between families and love...

Big Mistakes . Dan Levy has a free pass from me for the rest of his life for giving us Schitts Creek but he doesn’t need it for his new black comedy.   Nicky (Levy) and Morgan (Taylor Ortega) are a squabbling brother and sister who need to buy a gift for their dying Nonna but things quickly spiral out of control when Morgan makes an impulsive mistake.  It’s both silly and fast moving with one of those plots where you don't want to think too hard, and also don't have the time to unpick it before moving onto the next thing.  But it also has a bit of heart too which is what will keep me coming back for more  A great cast too, including Laurie Metcalf, and I think there is mileage in the second series which has just been confirmed.  Lots of fun (Series, streaming on Netflix)  Off Campus.   A romance based in the hockey world, adapted from a book series?  Sounds a bit familiar, but this is no Heated Rivalry .   Garrett  (Belmont Cameli) is a...

Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner play the charismatic dissolute and scheming villains who toy with love and lust in their struggle for power in this gorgeous adaptation by Marianne Elliott    Marquise de Merteuil (Lesley Manville), and society rake, Vicomte de Valmont (Aidan Turner) set up a scheme to seduce an innocent girl just out of convent school, and an upright and an honourable young wife.  As the plot unwinds they realise that they are risking more than they thought.    There’s a deceptively spare and modern set at the start, which is populated as needed by swirling walls and doors that create privacy and exposure  The  costumes here are gorgeous, shown at their best by the choreography that builds the mood and is used, particularly in the second half to illustrate both  the passion and violence and give us a sense of what is really going on under the surface.   Lesley Manville, as always is fantastic, so contained and precise, a...

This is a complete updating of Ibsen’s classic early feminist creation at the Almeida, and I really wanted to like it.   Romola Garai is Nora, who, in this iteration, is married to a financier with a city boy made good vibe, (including the recovery from addiction).  He is just about to make it big by selling his company.  Nora is an over-excited trophy wife when we first meet her, spending money that as her husband points out, they don’t have yet.  But she wants a good family Christmas and so Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) acquiesces.  But all is not as it seems.  Nora has secretly put them in debt to save her husband and family, but a blackmail plot and a flirtation make everything a lot more complicated.   I appreciate the attempt to bring it up to date,and it is ostentatiously of the moment, including the delight of a  financier recognising that war will bring in big money for him.  The question of how to be a woman in today’s world is still a ...

An Episcopalian church in  the US is preparing for the arrival of some special visitors who will need privacy in one of their rooms.  Life is going on in the rest of the building but Brandon (Ameri Bacchus) and Judy (Susie Trayling) as they are setting up, decide to stop the music lessons and other activities until after the meeting is over so that there are no distractions.   The visitors are two sets of parents who lost their children in a school shooting seven years before. Gail (Lyndsey Marshal) and Jay (Adeel Akhtar) lost their son Ewan whilst the murderer was Linda (Monica Dolan) and Richard (Paul Hilton)’s son  The four parents sit at a table in the middle of the room and talk through  their grief, anger, regrets, and consider if or how they can reconcile themselves to what has happened.   A small scale truth and reconciliation hearing.   This is a new play at the Donmar by Fran Kranz which I understand is based on the film of the...

This witty play by Winsome Pinnock takes us on a brisk but clever journey through a country house mystery with cod ghost story undertones.  I enjoyed it a lot.  Fee (Sylvestra Le Touzel) is a direct descendent of Henry Harford and has inherited the family estate, complete with a grand but crumbling mansion, and has discovered journals from her slave owning ancestor.  Abi (Rakie Ayola) and Marva (Cherrelle Skeete) are Black academics trying to authenticate the documents .  There’s much fun to be had poking fun at the impoverished aristocracy selling off their legacy to all and sundry to keep things going, with a fake ghost and a music artist, ‘Fallas E’ making a music video in the fountain in the grounds.  As the plot moves on, It turns out that everyone has some kind of connection to the Harford family plantation.  Abi’s Nigerian aristocratic ancestry were implicated in the slave trade, whilst Marva a working class protege has potentially her own link with ...

 Maxim Gorky’s play, first performed in 1905, puts his own spin on dissolute Russians hanging out in the countryside, oblivious to the plight of the peasant class.  With period dress, but with the language ostentatiously modern (reworked by Nina and Moses Raine), and covering similar ground as Chekhov, (apparently this was written as a response),  for a moment or two I wondered if we had accidentally wandered into The Cherry Orchard or Uncle Vanya instead.   Varvara (Sophie Rundle) and Sergei (Paul Ready) are hosting a large party at their summer retreat, and they and their guests spend their time bickering, and idly talking about life’s pointlessness and poetry whilst in the background (and sometimes in the foreground too) love affairs are played out.  A famous writer is coming to the house, and the party are putting on their own performance of A Midsummer Nights Dream.   These people are not aristocrats, but born into poverty, self made, and edu...