Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

 Apparently I saw 42 theatre productions in 2025, although I feel like I still missed loads.  Anyway, this is my pick of the year - totally subjective and I am making the rules to suit me.  I have written about each one of these earlier in the year so have given the links to those  reviews too. Best New Play Clarkston:   Considering I know very little about the opening up of the American West, this wasn't really a must see, and I initially booked because Heartstopper's Joe Locke was starring, and I was curious to see him on stage.  But actually, despite the unpromising subject matter, I found the play really interesting, with themes around small towns and lives vs big ideas, economic, historical and cultural forces, and this takes a look at where meaning does and should sit, with dextrous writing which wraps the ideas together so that each line has more than one meaning. InterAlia:   I loved Prima Facie and this play, by the same writer Suzie Miller, ...

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...