Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

Mark Rylance back on stage again is always a moment for celebration, even when I am back in the gods, looking mainly at the top of his head.  This was made more challenging in the first half by a tall man in front of me, fidgeting and (I can’t believe it but it really is true)  wearing a hat. Luckily there was a vacant seat along the row so the second half was much better and ironically the man took his hat off, just possibly triggered by me muttering about hats in theatres.   Rylance in the title role, plays the man who discovered a way to stop the huge number of maternal and infant deaths from purpureal fever but then was not listened to, due partly to the failure of those medical men to listen, but also due to his own failure to manage the way he communicated the message.  A story about science and the human failure to listen and act, it feels quite timely given the science that humanity is collectively ignoring at the moment.  But it is also a human drama an...

In the great Barbenheimer battle I chose Barbie.  I will watch Oppenheimer eventually but 3 hours of unadulterated angst felt a bit much on a Friday afternoon, even when leavened with Cillian Murphy’s cheekbones.    So, Barbie was thoroughly enjoyable, although I thought a bit too long - this should have been a 90 minute movie.  The basic premise is that all is well in Barbieland with all those women in the Supreme Court, being lawyers, doctors and having a girls night every night, while the Kens are there to ‘beach’ and look pretty.  Then the real world creeps in and Barbie and Ken set off to fix things.   I did enjoy the ‘Kenergy’ from Ryan Gosling and they have a lot of fun with bringing patriarchy to Barbieland, and maybe softly raising feminism with all of those girls, guys and theys dressed in pink in the audience.  I  don’t want to forget that  Michael Cera as an eager but a bit sad Allan, is perfect too.  The sets and overall pro...

Well this is a play for theatre geeks if ever I saw one.  We missed the cheap tickets when they were first released and so grabbed these seats when they came up as returns.   Written by Jack Thorne (who also wrote When Winston Went to War With The Wireless, currently at The Donmar ), the story is based around the rehearsal period for the 1964 production of Hamlet starring the newly married Richard Burton, directed by John Gielgud.  I am just a sucker for any version of Hamlet anyway, so I loved the whole thing, combining chunks of the play, mixed with the rehearsal process alongside homages to theatre, using Burton’s struggles to find ‘his Hamlet’ as the guiding thread.  The battles between Gielgud (Mark Gatiss) and Burton (Johnny Flynn) are as entertaining as they are enlightening, with their conflict between the old and new eventually creating something different.   There’s a bit of a look of the biography of the protagonists too which shows the feed...

Another week without theatre because I got my live cultural fixes this week from London Pride then Wet Leg and Pulp all on the same day.  All lovely experiences although it reminded me how annoying other people can be*, despite the uplifting experience of a crowd cheering or singing in unison.  I can report Pride still keeps a tiny beating heart of protest in there despite the size of the crowds and corporate-ness.  Wet Leg were as entertaining as I hoped and Jarvis has definitely still got it.   What I have done though is watch some films and tv on streaming so here are my ramblings about those instead. God’s Own Country Brokeback Mountain with a Yorkshire accent.  I really enjoyed this redemption story from 2017 about a trapped young man (Josh O'Connor) keeping the family farm together in desperate circumstances and with a coping strategy involving alcohol and casual sex.  He is saved in more ways than one by a Romanian farm worker (Alec Secareanu) who co...