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, ...

At a puppet show in a town square, a deaf boy is shot dead by a soldier for not responding to his commands.  The next day the whole town wakes up deaf or pretending to be.  This play at the Royal Court is based on the 2019 book length poem by Ukranian poet Ilya Kaminsky.  Using signing, spoken and written word, it's also a multimedia work, making use of cameras and projection, puppetry and even a drone hovering intimidatingly over the audience at one point.   The set is deceptively simple in design, with the puppet stage staying central whilst other elements and the cast move around it. The sound design is excellent too, with white noise and low rumbling sounds, sometimes blurred speech, evoking a tiny bit of the deaf experience.  It sounds as if it will be bitty, but it does come together in something of a poetic tapestry.   This is a complicated play, a fable, with layer upon layer of metaphor and allegory, and despite light and moving moments, ...