Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

I saw this a few weeks ago ( notes here ) and despite some reservations, I really was blown away by the performances.  I also felt it had taken me a while to properly get to grips with it the first time around, and as it isn’t the sort of thing that gets recorded for posterity I grabbed a last minute bargain ticket in the front row of the circle to watch it again.   Everything I said about it the first time is still true, an intimate play with big themes, about two young men trying to find their place in a world which doesn’t really have space for their dreams, living small lives in small towns which are not where the action is*.  I like the way that the big stories of the western colonialist expansion, tales of derring do which are used to create a great national story, are nicely undercut through Lewis and Clark’s 1804-6 expedition diaries, talking about the realities of hard travel, bad food, mixed with appalling racism and exploitation of the native peoples and s...

I am a big admirer of Nicola Walker, and in this particular play at the Royal Court she is Miriam, a mother grappling with the disappearance of her teenage son, Oscar.  The play ranges over a seven year period, dipping back and forward, with panic at the early stages, and as the police investigation remains unresolved, the whole family find different ways of living with the absence.  The Unbelievers in this case are the family who have lost faith that Oscar will return and are finding ways to move forward with their lives, whereas Miriam is fierce and obsessive about not giving up.  Things all come to a head when Oscar's dad (Paul Higgins) suggests holding a memorial service. The staging is simple but effective with a soulless waiting room at the back where the cast go when they are not performing, presumably to represent the limbo the characters are all experiencing; meanwhile the main action takes place in the living room towards the front of the stage.  I think th...

 Othello at the Theatre Royal Haymarket An Othello with a starry cast of David Harewood (Othello) and Toby Jones (Iago), it had a full auditorium with a young and excited audience (I'm assuming it is still on the A level curriculum).  A simple but effective set, and this is a fairly simple and effective version.  Whilst the racism and misogyny are present, they are played pretty straight, without, for example trying to make it particularly current.   David Harewood was great, moving from an expansive and in love Othello, to a broken vengeful man as Iago’s poison sinks in, and the surrounding cast were all pretty pitch perfect.  I found Toby Jones a weasely Iago, although not as compelling as Rory Kinnear’s version back in 2013ish.  What I did  find strange was the amount of laughter at Iago’s dastardly plans - this wasn’t uncomfortable titters, but proper laughs as if this was all just a bit of sport.  They did dry up after the interval thoug...

This was an intense hour and 45 minutes.  It's based on Genet’s play about two maids conspiring against their overbearing, self obsessed and unpleasant mistress, who in this iteration is some kind of online lifestyle influencer.  This turns into a fast and furious critique about celebrity culture, social media and online influencing whilst mostly keeping hold of the original plot.  Visually stunning, this makes one of the best and most innovative use of screens I have seen, with live streaming from iPhones into the massive mirror/screens that fill the back of the stage.  The use of filters and personas is inspired, and helps with the sense that reality and fantasy are getting more and more blurred.  The maids don't just try on her clothes, but also her online persona.   The three person cast (Phia Saban, Lydia Wilson, and Yerin Ha), are all fabulously on point with this, although it is sometimes hard to focus on them, given the amount also going on on ...

Down Cemetary Road - Based on a novel by Mick Herron, the man responsible for Slow Horses, I am only two episodes in but it has a great cast, and it's fast moving and lots of fun.  It’s a slightly odd mix of thriller and comedy in a way which actually isn't very different from Slow Horses, but some of the characterisation is a bit too broad, so it sometimes feels a bit clashy with some actors thinking they are in a comedy, others in a dark thriller.  Of course, it can be both, but it isn't quite as subtle as Slow Horses.  Despite some tiny reservations the dialogue is pretty snappy and I am enjoying Emma Thompson as the stylish equivalent of Jackson Lamb.  It’s being released one episode at a time so let’s see how it develops. ( Series, streaming on AppleTV+) Film Club - Romcom vibes, but with the rom being more of a tease rather than any action, this is a well put together family comedy drama written by and starring Aimee Lou Wood as a young woman who holds a film ...

This is a hit play that has been around for quite some time although it has only got to London this summer. A uplifting play about mental health, depression and the small joys of life, with one performer telling the story of their mother and something of their own life with the help of audience members.  The different performers plus the audience interaction means it is different each night and in this run we have already had Lenny Henry, Sue Perkins, Ambika Mod and Jonny Donahoe (one of the original co-creators) .   When we arrived, Minnie Driver, the final performer in this run, was already bustling around the auditorium, talking to audience members as they arrived, and handing out cards.  We were in the gods so too far away to be involved. The actual play itself is pretty short but effective, and I absolutely get why the audience were given the cards to read out, although I couldn’t always hear what was being said, depending on how loud or where in the auditorium ...

Despite the underpinning themes of American colonialism and the westward landgrab vs modern America, this is a suprisingly intimate play, although as it is written by Samuel D Hunter who wrote The Whale  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.   Jake, a well to do liberal arts graduate has been following the westward trail towards the Pacific taken by his ancestor, but he washes up 300 miles short in the small town of Clarkston and gets a night job in Costco where he meets Chris.  Chris is trying to get into a writing course, but has an addict mum to worry about.  So that’s the set up, which doesn’t sound particularly promising but this ends up being a tender play about people trying to find connection and make the best of their lives, despite the challenges they face.  It’s a bit clunky with the amount of exposition, but the central performances are excellent and I found myself drawn into the lives and concerns of the young men.   Joe Locke plays Jak...

Hamnet - my first proper film of the festival this year, on a Monday morning, so not particularly auspicious.  But we had seen a production of Hamlet on the preceeding Friday, so were nicely primed.  Hamlet is hands down my favourite play ever, and I really loved Maggie O'Farrell's novel on which the film is based, directed by Chloe Zhao of Nomadland fame.  The story imagines how the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet led to the creation of the play Hamlet.  That sounds simple, but along the way it muses over the way that life and art are wrapped together, one feeding the other in a continuous loop.   The novel tells the story largely through the interior lives of the characters, and so I wasn't at all sure how that would be managed.  It was managed by ditching that altogether and having fantastic actors to bring that to us without words,  Jessie Buckley is absolutely the centre of the film , but Paul Mescal brings his fullest and best game to this...

This play by Liz Duffy Adams, transferred from the RSC, has the second fictionalised re-imagining of William Shakespeare I have seen this week.  With Ncuti Gatwa as Marlowe and Edward Bluemel as Shakespeare, the play imagines the two great writers meeting to collaborate on a series of plays to please their patrons (apparently recent academic research speculates that Marlowe may have been a contributor to Henry IV parts 2 and 3).  This is an Elizabethan police state, with factions and spies, and Marlowe up to his neck in all of it.  Shakespeare, meanwhile, is still relatively early in his career and is somewhat overwhelmed by the far more famous Kit Marlowe.   The 90 minutes of this play is an intense sparring match between the two poets as they challenge, flirt, fight, argue and occasionally collaborate.  There’s some flashy technology to open and to occasionally allow Shakespeare to break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience.  But otherw...

Of course it’s always hard to find something new about a 400 year old play, but this production at the National Theatre has a good go at it.  Opening with a suitably atmospheric ghost scene, we shift to a genteel palace interior and meet our prince.  This one is young and cocky, interacting with the audience from the start, and there is a definite attempt to bring some comedy.   For the first half, the set and the music were evocative to me of a country house Agatha Christie-ish whodunnit.  And that worked very well as Hamlet investigates whether his uncle really did kill his father.  The second half though contains a lot more darkness and metaphysical musings and here I would have appreciated a change in tone.  Instead it carried on pretty much the same.   Hiran Abeyskera as Hamlet was different in a good way with his youthfulness and lightness of touch in his 'Tobacco and Boys' t-shirt, rattling through and almost throwing away his lines...

The Hack - A highly accessible, if far too long, account of the hacking scandal illustrating the web of back scratching, corruption and illegal activity held in place with fear over many years.  It’s a depressing story, and unfortunately a complicated one due to the web of connections and cover-ups that needed to be exposed.  But it’s told with verve, using the same approach as The Big Short , simplifying with explanations direct to camera by our narrator and guide, David Tennant as the journalist Nick Davies who over many years doggedly hunted this story down for The Guardian . I fear nothing much has changed, and in fact it may well have accelerated the mistrust of all journalism, including the good and honourable ones, and the turning to online ‘experts’ instead.  The text at the end explaining what happened next was both damning and depressing  But even so, it is worth a watch to remind ourselves of what happened and is maybe still happening. ( Series, ITV and ...