Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

  A play with an excellent pedigree, written by Lucy Prebble of I Hate Suzie and Succession, I missed the original production with Billie Piper.   The performance we saw had understudy Mara Huf, playing Connie against Paapa Essiedu’s Tristan.  If this made any difference I don’t really care as what I saw  tonight was still very good indeed.  We had seats in the slips, one of my favourite spots in the Lyttleton, which was transformed by the traverse stage with the other half of the audience looking back at us.   A four hander, we have Connie and Tristan as the participants in a trial for an anti depressant drug, observed by two doctors Lorna and Toby. In a a bare set except for the lighting effects, a couple of chairs and a bucket with a brain in it, both sides of the audience watch each other as we watch two people fall in love, and the observers explore love, depression, the after effects and lots more besides. The play explores firstly, how much...

While we were in Islington for the Almeida we also dropped into this collection of 20th century Italian art.  A small but really interesting permanent collection together with a new exhibition ‘Identities’ a collection of Lisette Carmi’s photographs.  Carmi’s work is in two galleries on the ground floor.  Thematically organised with one documenting the lives of working people on the docks and a cork factory in particular and the other on a transexual community in the 1960s.  Described as a Humanist artist, and focusing on marginalised communities, the photos are very much in the social and cultural history genre and of their time but highlighting the humans behind the labels and the social conditions they faced.  In an interview playing in a loop Carmi talks about being a woman in a rigidly gendered world, she describes how her work was criticised and ridiculed, and how the years that she spent with the trans community helped to understand her own identity as ju...

I hold two concurrent but conflicting views about this play at the Almeida; firstly that it is a bit too clever for its own good with its Russian doll structure, secondly that it’s an enjoyable winding exploration of the nature of repression, propaganda, truth, art, and the role of the writer and theatre.  Overriding it all though are the great performances from the main cast, which are worth seeing whatever you think of the actual play.  The audience are greeted with what appears to be an immersive performance of a state sanctioned wedding, complete with orders of service on every seat, and a drinks and canapés table to the side.  Čelik (Jonny Lee Miller) as master of ceremonies opens the wedding between Adem (Micheal Ward)  and Mei (Tanya Reynolds).   However as soon as the state official leaves, the wedding halts and it is clear we are attending an underground performance of a play in a repressive state.  This play within a play shows the writer Ade...

  I caught a preview of It’s Headed Straight Towards Us at The Park theatre in Finsbury.  Hugh (Sam West) and Gary (Rufus Hound) are two actors united in their enmity for each other, stuck in a trailer on a glacier for filming the seventh instalment in a superhero franchise.  We start with two classic actor stereotypes;  Firstly, Hugh, the fussy perfectionist who models himself on Daniel Day-Lewis with a steady career in supporting roles, proud of and defending his place in the hierarchy, and then there's Gary, the has-been, down on his luck, scratching a living in bit parts between drinking bouts at the nearest bar.  A pair of dinosaurs, Gary almost literally in a monster costume and definitely prehistoric in his attitudes while Hugh tries and fails to be a modern man. Joining the two is Leela (Nenda Neururer) as the young production assistants trying to keep everything on track.  Things start badly when Gary can’t be found, and then take a downward turn ...

Here are my notes from the telly I have been watching recently while hiding from the rain or heat.  I have already talked about Heartstopper elsewhere but there’s been a lot of other good stuff too.  I am still gripped by Ruth Wilson in The Woman in the Wall, but as it is being drip fed weekly the old fashioned way, I will have to be patient! Wolf This was a disorienting experience but well worth hanging on with fingernails if necessary, or possibly hiding behind a cushion if gory violence isn’t your thing.  There are three stories smashed together to make not necessarily a coherent whole, but certainly something worth watching! We have a classic noir type thriller where a detective is still trying to solve the disappearance of his brother when they were children.  Then there are the ‘Donkey Pitch’ murders of two teenagers years before - is the right man behind bars or still at large?  The third strand is a family (including Juliet Stevenson and Owen Teale) who...

 A spur of the moment ticket booking,  the studio at Park Theatre was almost full, with the front half of the audience at tables as if in a cabaret bar.   In this short one act play, Will, a northern ‘bloke’ tells us about the time he fell in love at first sight.  The difficult bit is that Candy, the object of his affection,  is the drag alter ego of his friend Billy.  Is Candy just Billy, or someone completely different? The hour long monologue is an exploration of what love is, the boundaries and cross over between love and friendship, romance and sex, and how much we can ever know one another. Will wrestles with identity,  masculinity and mental health along with his fear of being alone as he first luxuriates in, then struggles with, his new feelings.  It’s peppered throughout with laughs and banter with the audience which punctuate those heavier moments, keeping it entertaining.  Will (Michael Waller) is a bit of a lad and can tell a...

I just happened to see this advertised at the Park Theatre, Finsbury Park and I thought it looked interesting, so following my usual thought processes I bought tickets without any further research. The play opens with rain and a bustling street and umbrellas and then a packed train journey before  schoolboy Takao (Hiroki Berrecloth) ends up sheltering from the rain.  There’s an older woman, Yukari (Aki Nakagawa),  already in the shelter and there's a bird watching and swooping around them.  The rest of the first half of the play consists of a series of episodes playing out the back stories to these characters. It looked good and it was atmospheric but I had trouble pulling it together to make anything cohesive.  Then when you add that although the dialogue was in English but with chunks of Japanese at key points, it was fair to say I was engaged but confused.  Why all the shoes I kept wondering… why a shoemaker?  After a restorative ice cream we came b...