Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

The last time I saw this revenge tragedy must be more than 40 years ago and I remember it being a violent and bloody misery fest.  But this version has Jodie Whittaker so when I spotted a last minute discount ticket in the stalls I couldn’t resist. Whittaker is impressive from the start, commanding the stage and running rings around her childish, cartoonish, controlling brothers as she relishes her freedom after being widowed.  She continues to confidently hold the reins as she secretly marries her weak but sweet steward.  So far so good, but all falls to pieces pretty quickly from there.   The first half of this production is actually a bit of a mess, disjointed and with some strange decisions around direction, the text and which scenes to keep or cut.  With modern dress and setting, the original language is almost completely ditched by Zinnie Harris in this version, and the focus is resolutely on the misogyny and aggressive patriarchy which cannot let a w...

Had a fab day of film overdose with three very different films First was Elton John: Never too late, the new documentary which takes a retrospective look at his career with the backdrop of his personal life.. Produced by David Furnish, this was never going to be a hatchet job and some parts of John’s biography are a bit glossed over but that didn’t detract from the overall film which spends a lot of time in the early years and with some great archive material and some moving snippets I had never seen before,  A great companion piece to Rocketman which was much more focused on his personal life  The biggest annoyance was a couple behind us, obviously fans but who thought they were in their living room, chatting their way through the interesting bits and occasionally singing along.  A Disney+ production,  I hope and assume it will be on streaming soon, but great to see it in such a big space. Next was The Wild Robot, an animation with some huge names doing the voice wo...

I loved Alexander Zeldin’s earlier play The Confessions , so I was really keen to see what he had done with the tale of Antigone, reworked for a modern blended suburban family. The set is a house being renovated to ‘bring in the light’ with walls knocked down and swishing doors to the garden demonstrated to everyone, all very 'Grand Designs'.  But the house used to belong to Chris’s brother and it is being renovated to get rid of the past and move on.   As part of moving on, Chris (Tobias Menzies) has decided that it is time to scatter the ashes to get his brother finally out of the house, and is determined to do so.   One of his nieces Issy (Alison Oliver) is already living in the house with memories of before and they are joined by Annie (Emma D'Arcy), her sister, who hasn’t let go of an ounce of her grief and has decided that her Dad's ashes should stay in the house. The intransigence and battles between Chris and Annie takes some gasp inducing turns as they tussl...

  I cannot lie, the big draw for me of this Beckett classic was Ben Whishaw and he and the whole cast didn't disappoint, doing a great job of bringing what can be a pretty bleak play to life. Set in a colourless blasted landscape with a nearly dead tree as the only landmark, Vladimir (Ben Whishaw) and Estragon (Lucian Msamati)  are waiting for Godot, their unseen overseer.  Passing through is Pozzo (Jonathan Slinger), and his bound and whipped lacky going by the name of Lucky (Tom Eddon).  In the first half, the long pauses broke up the tragicomedy of the two men trying to find interesting ways to pass the time in an empty, bleak and meaningless world.  As I think is deliberate, the wait for the interval felt interminable at times with the pointless of it all.  Interestingly, the second half picked up a bit in pace, as we have the existential angst of human existence laid out for us.  I really enjoyed the dynamic between Msamati and Whishaw, holding ha...