Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

  A last minute change of plan saw me heading to the Royal Court after Skeleton Crew was cancelled at the Donmar. The Royal Court is leaning into an experimental phase at the moment and this is no exception.  Like Bluets , this makes use of loads of technology but in this case we have different actors each night, unprepared and unrehearsed, cold-reading the play, partnering and standing in for the playwright who joins by webcam, apparently from his Berlin flat.   Tonight the actor was Nick Mohammed but unfortunately my last minute cheap seat was restricted view, and the staging meant that for about half the performance I couldn’t actually see him so a chunk of his performance was as a disembodied voice.  Wearing an earpiece which was feeding lines and stage directions, when I could see him, Mohammed looked remarkably calm as he responded to what was happening on screen or the directions he was being given. The playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is Iranian, now livin...

 A musical about mental illness, this is the latest in a bit of a run recently in plays dealing with this topic.  In this one, Diana and Dan, with their two teenage children, seem like a normal American family living in their swish, glossy house, but it becomes clear that Diana is struggling to manage her bi-polar disorder and there is a family tragedy and grief lying just below the surface and about to come roaring out despite their ever more frantic attempts to keep everything ‘normal’.  With a great live band and some catchy rock,pop and ballad numbers it pretty much steams along with great vocal performances throughout.  The exploration of the treatment for mental health conditions feels pretty American.  Where are the waiting lists and delays? Instead we see bucketloads of drugs being handed over with seemingly little thought as to their consequences.  At its heart,  this is a moving family drama, looking at the effects of poor mental health and g...

An evening at the Globe in the company of a non-male cast, this was the theatre using its pantomime tendencies almost exclusively for good.   Michelle Terry gives us full force toxic masculinity with a blonde wig, a fake six pack and braggadocio posturing that leaves us in no doubt of Richard’s character.  With references to 'making England great again', and self-aggrandising speeches, sometimes with a hint of an American accent, there there were plenty of references to Trump.  And if we were any doubt, the red baseball caps worn by Richard's supporters in the second half ought to clear that up.   The thing about Richard of course is that he is so deliciously bad it can't help being fun, and so there are lots and lots of laughs to be had.  For the first half the crowd is hyped up to cheer and go along with Richard’s tyranny but the switch to understanding what are the consequences of not standing firm are really deftly handled in the second half, with ...

Jo (Justine Mitchell) is the first female head of a college, an ex journalist and firebrand feminist in her youth, brought in to improve diversity.  A student, Nikki (played by an excellent Phoebe Cambell), who plans to become an activist/ journalist herself has meanwhile begun keeping track of microagressions which are normalising what she identifies as a pervasive rape culture at the college.  She is spurred into action when she discovers a rape has taken place.  The play is a twisty windy exploration of the differences between different generations of feminists, particularly highlighted by the previous firebrand now trying to close down the issues to protect the institution she one railed against.  Added into the mix are the competing interests of individuals and institutions and an attempt to tease out the myriad implications of #metoo, trial by social media and shifting attempts to place blame.  It led to some interesting conversations in the interval and t...

  A good on-the-day deal from TodayTix meant that I finally got to see this Olivier winning play and actor.  In the traverse staging and in subject matter it reminded me quite a lot of The Effect (which I wrote about here ).   And I found the sound design really powerful too.  The main draw here though is the stunning performance from Denise Gough as ‘Emma’ an addict and actor we first meet slurring her way through a production of The Seagull before she heads into rehab.  It’s a clever and, in the end, devastating move to have Sinead Cusack play both therapists and Emma’s mother.  There’s quite a lot here about the many layers and multiple personalities that actors adopt, all fake, and the camaraderie and friendship that only lasts as long as the production which give nice parallels to the rehab process.  Capturing the complexity of addiction and the many layers of deviousness, cause and effect, the difficulty of untangling abuse and abuser this h...

My busy weekend started out with a visit to Dominic West's version of Eddie in A View from the Bridge .  A fairly traditional interpretation, what I did find interesting was that Eddie's increasingly toxic behaviour was still being laughed at by the audience, which I found really strange.  In the second half, the first kiss got the appropriate hiss/gasp of shock, but the second one, which is surely one of the cruxes of the play, got some gasps but also quite a lot of laughter - what was that about?  Apart from that, the modern resonances around immigration and fragile working class masculinity still hold I think.  I liked Callum Scott Howell's portrayal of Rodolpho too, a proud man who refuses to conform to the stereotypes and hostility he faces as an illegal immigrant, although his italian accent was a bit flaky.  In this version I felt a fair bit of sympathy for Eddie who doesn't understand himself, living in a world he doesn't understand, and I think that is ...