Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

 I love the Donmar as a theatre, even when, as on this occasion, I am in the back row of the circle in the horrid high seats.  And with this production, in the round, and with the lights kept up, implicating us all in the events on stage, there is even more opportunity for people watching than usual.  I was particularly taken with the woman who held the programme up to the side of her face for the whole of the first half, then kept a scarf wrapped over her nose and mouth for most of the second.  Was there a bad smell?  Did she have toothache? And of course there were always the few who looked like they were dropping off. So what about the actual play?  Well this is a radical rethink, with a hippy feel and significant rework of the text, making it much swearier and up to date in general.  And it had lots of music added, particularly in the second half, plus a conscious effort to involve the audience in the action, to the extent of getting audience members up on stage.  The  individual p

I did a fair bit of pondering over who is really the underdog in this new play by Sarah Gordon.  We meet all three Brontë sisters but Charlotte (an excellent, feisty Gemma Whelan) is the one who acts as our guide through this story, and it’s her point of view we hear although she's a pretty unreliable narrator.  The play is funny and rolls along, more than a little bit meta, and with plenty of reaching across the fourth wall.  We get to meet the sisters when they are trying to work out how to make ends meet and eventually develop their plan to use male pseudonyms to get their work published.  I liked the scratchy way their sibling relationships and rivalries were laid out, with Charlotte as the bossy and overbearing older sister with narcissist tendencies, and Anne (Rhiannon Clements) constantly being undermined but fighting back.   The play references their work, but actually it is only interested really in their relationship, so it was a shame really that we didn't get to kno

I don’t know Henry IV pts 1 and 2 very well, so don't really know what they lopped off to squeeze the two plays into 3hrs 40 minutes including interval.  But whatever was lost, the remaining bits produced an engaging few hours.   Ian McKellen’s Falstaff, who was the original big draw for me, was as good as I hoped, playing a big bluff character with subtlety underneath the coarseness.  His Falstaff is older of course, but with richness and depth even in part one, and the relationship with the prince develops beautifully during the play.  My big takeaway though was that Toheeb Jimoh as Hal was really impressive and a talent to watch I think. He plays the prince as a high energy and wild fun seeker at the start.  He holds himself tight, with a sense of danger and anger just below the surface and this comes out not just against his father the King (Richard Coyle), but with Falstaff as his other father figure.  And I loved the way the relationships are played in that triangle.   I foun

We were a bit late to the party booking tickets to An Enemy of the People, so it was almost sold out on the cheaper seats  and we ended up standing.  We did a bit of horse trading so that we could stand together, but I quite like standing; there’s often a touch more camaraderie with the plebs standing at the back so as usual there were a few interesting chats to be had before and afterwards. As for the play, I found the opening scenes a bit dry with loads of exposition and struggled to get into it a bit, and the earnestly hip gang on stage were also quite annoying. But by about half an hour in, I had bought into the narrative and was interested to see what happened next.  Centred around a water pollution scandal in a small town, it reminded me a bit of The Inquiry at Chichester last year.   This reworking of the Ibsen play makes us think about our own complicity in the situation we find ourselves in not just in a theoretical way, but bringing it to life with current ethical and politi

The Hills of California A Jez Butterworth play comes with high expectations.  As usual I deliberately hadn’t looked at reviews although I did see a lot of 4 stars so I was seated and ready, as was the youngish (good) but quite noisy (bad) audience. The play is set completely in the Seaview Guesthouse (previously Seaview Guesthouse and Spa - but with no view of the sea).  And we open in the public lounge - a seventies classic with broken jukebox and a tropical themed bar.  Three of the family’s four daughters are assembling as their mother Veronica lies dying upstairs.  It’s Blackpool in the midst of the drought of 1976 and everybody is very very hot. This first scene tells us a lot about the family dynamics (mother upstairs is still keeping up appearances wearing her wig) and the women are arguing about whether Joan, who moved to California 20 years ago and has never been back, will show. So, a family drama about grief and loss mixed in with a lot of family dynamics.  And the heat give

I had a good afternoon at a matinee of this musical on the last day of the run.  The play is framed through a contemporary lense via a grumpy Bob Geldof dealing with questions from a sceptical Gen-Z-er about this event that she learnt about in her history lessons.  The production obviously knows its audience because it gave us a moment to be horrified that our youth was someone else’s history lesson.  It was true though that the vast majority of heads bobbing along to the music were grey.    A juke box musical in many ways I really enjoyed the reworking of hits so that we never got impersonations, instead reimagining of the music.  That’s obviously for the best when you are dealing with Bohemian Rhapsody - it’s a brave singer that takes that on (we had a really powerful version actually from the company) but possibly my favourites were Message in a Bottle and Blowin’ in the Wind, both reimagined for maximum emotional punch.   The cast and live band were all really impressive, pretty mu

This play, For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy is inspired by Ntozake Shange’s For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide /When the Rainbow is Enuf.   It was a moving but also uplifting piece of theatre that I was properly glad to join in a standing ovation for.   Using the framework of a therapy session, the few hours on the stage are filled with dance, poetry, song and, most importantly, stories from Black boys lives.  Exploring what it means to be Black British and male, it journeys through love, school, racism, colourism, what language does, and the stereotypes and expectations these young men face. ‘What age were you when you found out you were scary?’.  This is a sometimes affectionate, but often brutal summary of what Black masculinity is, what it isn’t, but also what it could be. Properly funny and with well chosen song and dance to change our mood as well as being beautifully woven into the stories.  Great performances by all of the ensem

My evening started with a mad dash to get out of work and into town in time for this week’s theatre at the NT, this time for a revival of Dodie Smith’s 1930’s family drama.  It was lovely to bump into an old friend outside - that moment of confusion when you hear your name and can't see where it is coming from and wonder if you have misheard, then that sudden recognition!   In the theatre, the seats were the cheap ones third row from the front which are usually fine, but with two tall men in front of us, we knew we were in for some ducking and diving - one of them had the grace to apologise for being tall, although he didn't offer to swap seats unfortunately.  As usual I knew little about this play beforehand and so I was on the lookout in the first half for the twist, or hidden secret or grudge that was going to turn it around* and then I realised that actually, there wasn’t going to be any sharp edge or clever reveal.  Instead this is a slow but detailed examination of a fami

This is a really long post, but just a memory of some of the highlights of our trip.   When we planned our first ever trip to NYC it was still winter and the forecasts for March were for cold, cold and more cold.  For once we got lucky and it was sunny, dry and warm for most of our trip.  We scheduled ourselves a fair pace with our 'don't miss' and touristy things, plus a long list of  'if we have time' - sadly the latter will have to wait for another trip.   Monday March 11th  We flew out from Heathrow at 11.20 and landed in JFK at around 3.30pm.  And even an enormous school trip on our flight didn't dampen things too much.  I did get to watch Dune and Wonka (Timothée Chamalet overload!) on the way out, both films I had been putting off seeing, so I didn't feel it was a complete waste of time.  Immigration was surprisingly smooth given the stories we had heard.  So, once we had checked in we set out to explore the Times Square area and have some dinner befo

An evening at the theatre watching another play about the difficult birth of the NHS, this was a perfect mix of politics and sentiment that absolutely hit the spot for me.  Our pre-show conversation had been all about the hole that the country is in, and what could possibly shake us out of it, and it was like this production heard us and carried on the debate.   This is a biography of Nye Bevan  (Michael Sheen) as a patient of the NHS he brought into being, and from his hospital bed dosed up with morphine, recalling his life through surreal dreams.  Episodic and hallucinatory, we get shown the bullying he endured as a child partly due to his stammer, the death of his miner father through black lung , the wonder of a library with books ‘for free!!’ and the development of political nouse as he worked his way through committees and councils, including the Tredegar Medical Aid Society (the model for the NHS) before ending up in Parliament.   The challenges of turning dreams into reality, a

Wasia Project at Heaven I got tickets for the last night of this sold out tour just the day before, and I was pleased I did.  The band all performed beautifully, William Gao  got to show off his piano playing, there were great sax solos and Olivia Hardy's voice holds up as well live as in recording.  We were near the back, mainly because we didn't want to queue for hours, and also because we were too short to get lost in the sea of taller people jumping up and down.  I found out afterwards that I have continued my run of failing to spot famous faces, as evidenced by Twitter/X full of photos of Kit Connor just feet from where we were standing.  Overall though a lovely midweek treat.   Vanya  I missed this at the theatre so I am so pleased to have seen it.  This is an acting masterclass from Andrew Scott as he pretty seamlessly plays all of the characters from Chekov's play without taking a breath, costume change or a single wobble as far as I could see.   Although I am not r

After some strange shenanigans with tickets at the Donmar, we ended up with much better seats than we started with and, as I was potentially going to be one of those annoying people with a cough, I was also pleased to see we were next to an aisle so I could make an escape if needed.  However, the aisle turned out to be the main thoroughfare for the many, many scene changes, with beds, sofas and trolleys rattling past my knees every minute or so, adding a whole level of jeopardy I hadn’t expected.   The play was one of quite a few around at the moment, set at the difficult birth of the NHS.  In this case with Keeley Hawes playing Iris, a woman GP and Labour councillor campaigning to get the NHS started against the opposition of doctors (including her husband) and also trying to be a good wife and mother.  The different post war gendered experiences are laid out very clearly here with women being pushed back into the home, whilst men are dealing with the mental and physical fallout from

Just some films I have enjoyed over the first few months of 2024.   Nyad:   A film about one woman's determination to swim across the straits of Florida.  One of those films about individual grit and determination, and with great performances from Annette Benning and Jodie Foster.  My only problem with this is the same as with all of the 'individuals against the world' movies - it's good that they succeeded, but if only they could have put that effort and money into something that would made a difference to the world, rather than just to the individual in question.  Everybody loves Jeanne:  A lovely little romance between two odd souls, Jeanne a bankrupt entrepreneur who invented a product to clean the oceans, and Jean, who is strange, but strangely optimistic despite mental health issues.  Quirky and sweet. Joyland:  The youngest son in a Pakistani family takes up a job as a backing dancer to a transgender performer, and his wife struggles to cope.  Sweet and sad, th

I had a double bill sort of a day.  The last bit first…  Till the Stars Come Down  This production is in the round and for the first time ever I was on the far side of the Dorfman theatre.  On a simple, circular, revolving set, the play opens with women getting ready for a wedding, and for a good half hour the chat and laughter (with some pretty good one liners) swirls around as we get to know the three sisters at the heart of this play, a couple of nieces and Aunty Carol (an impressive Lorraine Ashbourne).  These woman are close, although Maggie (Lisa McGrillis) has moved away, something Hazel (Lucy Black) is clearly bitter about; and it also appears Aunty Carol has more or less invited herself and her ridiculously big hat.  The men only appear later as the wedding gets going, and that feels right in a play about all sorts of things but with a backdrop of a post- mining town where the main work is at a warehouse and the younger generation don't seem to know anything about the mine

Cowbois, a transfer from the RSC, is a joyous fantasy, delivered pantomime style.  The basic premise is that in a boring backwater town in the Wild West, the men have been gone for a long while looking for gold and the women are bored, and frustrated.   Then a dashing outlaw,  Jack Cannon, comes to town.  Jack is different from the other men and turns out to be exactly what is needed to shake up the town. There's a sign on the wall in the bar saying 'No Guns, No Politics' which is frequently ignored and only really noticed when anyone shakes the status quo.  Full of cliches,  subverted and played for laughs, this is a play about masculinity, gender, gender roles and freedom, calling out how hard it is to be different, in the end though everyone gets to try out what works for them. I’d say the play is about 20 minutes too long (I'd easily shave 10 minutes off each half) and it took me a while to get over the arch style being used here, but once I was in it was lovely.  T