Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

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...

The Other Bennet Sister - I wasn’t at all sure that this would work, but actually it was really enjoyable. It picks up the story of the Bennet sisters from Mary’s perspective. She is the butt of the jokes in Pride and Prejudice, and I thoroughly enjoyed the story from the point of view of the underdog, threaded through with in-jokes.  Starting off as awkward and overly serious, we watch this much maligned sister gradually unfurl and blossom. Short episodes too with lots of sharp insights and nods to P&P history.  Some of the characters get a bit of a redemption arc, including Mr Collins which was fun too, whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the  less than obliging take on the more glamorous Bennett sisters.  With Ella Bruccoleri as Mary, and Ruth Jones as Mrs Bennet, and a plot stuffed full of Easter eggs and outright theft from Austen, this was a bit of a treat. ( tv series, streaming on iplayer ) Under Salt Marsh -  a nicely atmospheric murder mystery thriller w...

Set in one room in a country house in Derbyshire, centuries apart,  the mysteries of the universe and those a bit closer to home are explored.   The set is in the round, a single circular space with circular lights and globes above, suggesting the universe; the staging really makes the most of this set up.  The two worlds  of the 19th and late 20th century overlap and sometimes intermingle in this clever, deceptively simple production.   In the 19th century, Thomasina (Isis Hainsworth) is learning about Euclidian geometry, Fermat's last theorem and latin, but also about love, and why a house guest has been discovered in a carnal embrace with her tutor, Septimus Hodge (Seamus Dillane). Their conversations are fond and bantering, and also pretty funny, as it becomes clear that Septimus is in the centre of plenty of romantic intrigue at the house and using his considerable charm to ensure he escapes any potential trouble.  He's also a conte...