Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

Hacks - last month I raved about this show but I hadn’t quite finished the final episodes.  Update: I finished it and I love it even more now.  It’s unusual for me to cry and laugh at the same time at a comedy but I did for this one.  It rounded off everyone’s stories so beautifully.  A tiny bit sentimental but with enough humour to cut through it.  I recommend this to the highest degree. (series, streaming on AppleTV) Youth - the latest comedy from Sharon Horgan.  This is a dramedy, touching on all of the sorts of issues that middle aged women have to deal with which should be right up my street but I don't know why, it didn't really hit the spot for me. I found the critique of the publishing industry a bit annoying, not because it isn't funny or accurate, but it felt a bit to me as if it was in-jokes for the cool crowd.  Maybe I was just feeling grumpy but The Guardian absolutely loved it, and my multiple disagreements with their critics departmen...

  Another week, another Heated Rivalry themed outing, this time to see the other parody musical about the show.  This one is of US heritage and it does make something of a difference.   This time the framing device is a trio of 'Susans',  basically wine moms, who sing about having some time to themselves once they have got their kids and husbands settled with other stuff.   This production is firmly rooted in musical theatre, with original songs which make the sort of sly references that musical theatre buffs will get.  Full disclosure, I am not a musical theatre buff, so I could spot that a reference was being made but rarely understood.  They are good solid songs, and the lyrics are a perfect mix of honouring and taking the piss out of the source.  Some of the songs have been recorded by the US cast, and they are all great. In this version, we get a few more characters which was good to see, and the important plot beats were all hit ve...

I got a returned ticket to see this in the almost sold out run for this play with Anne-Marie Duff doing her stuff as Julie, the woman who gets pushed just a bit too far. Anne-Marie Duff doing her stuff is both the strength and the weakness of this production.  Not only is she playing yet another middle aged woman pushed past her breaking point, but the situation she finds herself in feels so familiar it made me feel tired even if it’s a little unlikely in some of the detail.  This is designed to show what women, older women in particular,  are confronted with everyday, and it does that very well.  The little disrespects and rudeness that wouldn’t be directed towards a man, the structures and systems that mean that women start off with a disadvantage, and then men who know their power and how to use it.  Alongside the general crap that women have to deal with, this also highlights that middle aged and older women become invisible not just to men, but sometimes to...

  An abrupt change of tone for this tiny, fun production, sold out and just about to finish its run at The Other Palace Theatre.  Anyone who has been following my posts for the past few months will know that I have fallen in love with the Heated Rivalry tv show currently streaming on Sky/Nowtv in the UK.  The tv show diverts us from its classy credentials with the amount of sexiness, but there is actually a much more serious work of highest quality film making and performance hiding just under the surface.   This theatre production is what it says on the tin - a panto style parody of the show, taking the key plot points and characters but squeezing every last laugh it can out of the material.  I laughed all the way through, so much that my face really did ache a lot!  This is also highly classy in its way though, with every element thought through and with a solid cast of four, including Diana Vickers with her amazing voice doing a lot of heavy lifting...

This play starts with what initally appears to be a game of chance as Cate Blanchett or Nina Hoss get to choose on the flip of a coin which of them will play Electra/Elisabeth.  On the night I attended, Nina Hoss was Electra and Cate Blanchett was Clytemnestra/Alma.  I really enjoyed the first half,  which takes us through a mother/daughter battle, as Electra tries to understand the horrendous thing her mother has done.  On a bare stage, with just steps, the performances of both leads were excellent , and I really  enjoyed the interplay between the two leads.  Violent and vibrant, this had me on the edge of my seat, and not just because I had someone with a big head in front of me as always.  There's no interval, so we get a few minutes of visible set change and character resets as the two leads transform into their roles  for Persona, in the second half of the play, something, which now I think about it, makes a lot of sense as we are going to di...

 Josh O'Connor on the London stage at the Almeida theatre was never going to disappoint, so I bought our tickets on the first morning that membership booking opened, and I’m glad I did as it has been resolutely sold out for ages.  With the addition of Hayley Squires and Daniel Mays in the central cast it looked as though we were in for a treat.  Clifford Odet's play, written in 1937, is a bit of a period piece, set during the depression as Joe Bonaparte decides to leave behind his impoverished life as a violinist in New York, and instead become a prize fighter.  Nowadays the short cut would presumably be as a social media influencer.  Daniel Mays is Tom, playing to type as Joe's seedy and initially unwilling but increasingly more enthusiastic promoter. Hayley Squires plays Lorna Moon, Tom's mistress, wielded as a weapon to get Joe onside, but eventually, and fairly obviously, becoming part of a love triangle.  The production has more furniture and tradition...

Tip Toe - I had been putting this off because I knew it was going to be a hard watch.  The performances are all great and the message is heartfelt and one that needs to be heard although I suspect the people who need to hear it won’t be watching or listening.  David Morrisey plays Clive, the bigoted neighbour who Leo (Alan Cumming)  is convinced has a good heart.  Leo is an optimistic out and proud neighbour who chooses not to compromise with bigotry, which usually works until it doesn't.  In this time of increasing bigotry and aggression towards people who are different in any way, this was both scary and depressing,  particularly the approach taken by people who choose to hide by aping the people who would abuse them. David Morrissey does a great job of repressed anger and I found him terrifying on many occasions.  Similarly Alan Cumming as Leo is fantastic as the in-your-face loud and sure of himself man, deliberately building himself up and trying...

With a fantastic cast led by Sophie Okonedo this was always going to be an interesting evening at the Donmar Warehouse.    This adaptation of Turgenev's play was reworked by Brian Friel in the 1990s, but it still has the bare bones of pretty much any 19th century Russian play.  It's set in a country estate where family and friends are spending the summer with their staff, including the poor but bright and dashing young tutor Aleksey.  From the very start we are made aware of romantic entanglements,  Michel (Alistair Petrie) is both a friend to Natalya and her husband, but is also in love with Natalya.  Vera, the young ward of Natalya has also fallen for Aleksey (Patrick Gibson).  Meanwhile, the local GP, Shpigelsky (Daniel Rigby), may be pursuing Lizaveta (Amanda Wilkin) in a very pragmatic way whilst also pursuing Vera on behalf of an older local neighbour, Bolshintsov (Michael Hodgson) in return for promise of some horses.  And there...

I watch a lot of random stuff, following links and suggestions, and I don't tend to keep track, so I thought I would dig back through some of my browsing history over the past few weeks, to look at the links I have followed.  I can see my algorithm at work here, which is always interesting.  La Même Chose   https://youtu.be/swjGGEI_rmM?si=DW1QbRtNSdTUKuqo   This is a black and white 8 minute short film from 2024 starring the newly very bankable Connor Storrie from before he was famous and instead doing lots of interesting little arty projects with friends. This is a lovely detailed little interaction which works as a serious piece, and at the same time, a funny pisstake of a type of pretentious french film.  What really makes me smile is that lots of the fans commenting don't seem to think it's funny, so maybe it's just me, but 'give me biscuits or give me death' is excellent and I think I am going to add it to my collection of quotes to bring out when I am feel...

Letitia Wright plays Yvonne, an ambitious Black journalist in this play about journalism and journalistic integrity.  It’s set in 1990’s America, and a white man lost in a car in a rundown area of town is attacked and murdered, his wife describing the murderer as a Black man.  So it sets itself up as a bit of a whodunnit, with the newsroom well placed to investigate.  Yvonne is keen to cover the story but has just started her job in the Black newsroom and she is put on local Black stories rather than the bigger one she is interested in. Her boss is Pat (played by Lorraine Toussaint - loved her in Orange is the New Black ) a war weary veteran of the civil rights movement with Neil (Ashley Thomas), as her enthusiastic sidekick who is convinced the wife is responsible for the murder.  The last of the main quartet of the cast is Wilf Scolding as Jeff, Yvonne's rich boyfriend, who also happens to own the paper. Despite setting us up with a mystery, this is really about wh...

  Another night out at a period play, this time from 1969.  This domestic farce is still very funny, operating like clockwork as it should.  The premise is that Frank (Roger Allum), an ineffectual but well meaning man, decides to intervene when his wife explains that she missed their anniversary as someone in his work team is having an affair.  Being the genial, if incompetent boss that he is, and totally misunderstanding the situation, he tries to help resolve the perceived marital difficulties of Mary and William, Bob and Theresa, causing highly entertaining chaos.  The play is in the round, with the set ingeniously split between the overlapping homes of the Featherstones and the  Phillips. which enables  some excellent scenes where the couples have phone calls, conversations and even more entertaining, two concurrent dinner parties, without noticing the others are there. It is definitely funny, but some of the relationship dynamics are really dated,...

I had a trip into London on a day off, and managed to squeeze in a few exhibitions plus some theatre.  Abigail's Party I am going to start with the final visit of the day which was to see the Mike Leigh classic, Abigail's Party, revived with Tamzin Outhwaite as Bev, the monstrous hostess from the 1970s.  One of the amazing things about this was, although she opened with a slightly nasal intonation reminiscent of Alison Steadman's defining performance, she very quickly moved away and made Bev her own.   Bev is still a monster, perhaps a little more vicious than I remember, but that might be because the 1970's culture on display here was even more jarring than I remember it being when first produced.  A clever touch is to make Tony and Angela, their new neighbours who are visiting, of Asian heritage, adding an additional frisson to the class and other topics that fall out of Bev and Laurence's mouths. Tony and Ange are as awkward as any of us would be dealing with...