Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

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 ban...

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 per...

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 exami...

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 S...

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...

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...

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 an...