Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

  Well, this was a white knuckle ride!  Based on a 2018 Danish film, this is a tense thriller with Russell Tovey holding the stage for the full 65 minutes of the play. Joe (Tovey) is working alone in a police emergency response control room.  Bored, and with a monotone voice as he deals with time wasters, he is also making judgements about every call, and the people who call in, and deciding whether he needs to give it proper attention.  We learn he has family problems and that there is some kind of hearing hanging over him.  When he gets a call from Emily though, he gives it his full attention and we see him spring into action, perhaps going further than he should in true police drama style.   This is fantastically tense, with Tovey holding our attention every step of the way as we watch his decision making, both good and bad, unfold in real time.  It tackles toxic masculinity, and mental health issues as well as police misconduct and with a soci...

A revival of a JB Priestly play, and with a fabulous cast, this was a lovely gentle way to ease back into theatre for 2026  The set is a proudly hideous mustard living room with a cartoonishly large houseplant in the corner next to the piano, which sets the scene perfectly as Mrs Northrop, the nosy ascerbic housekeeper (played by Janice Connelly) gets us off to a good start with a rousing opening rendition of The Biggest Apidistra in the World.  We are then very quickly into the comic shenangans as the chapel organist (Gerald Forbes)  brings bad news to the three couples who have gathered together to celebrate their 25 years of marriage.  It appears that their wedding ceremonies were not valid, and this throws everything in the air and in a very entertaining way.  I loved the arrival of the wives to the stage after this bombshell to the dulcet tones of Beyoncé’s All the Single Ladies which was gleeful in its incongruity.  The whole play is a jab at mar...

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 ...

This latest play at the Donmar is a funny family drama but it is also full of knotty debates about how to live well.  Juniper Blood by Mike Bartlett opens on a family farm that needs renovating; Ruth (Hattie Morahan) and Lip (Sam Troughton) have just inherited and are full of ideas of how to be more sustainable.   With definite Chekovian undertones with the family farm under pressure and fraught family relationships I thought that might be where this goes, but alongside the entertaining family dramas this turns into a energetic and gripping debate  about what is a good and ethical way to live in a capitalist world gone bad.  Throw science at it or carry on regardless, make pragmatic changes around organic and sustainability, or go full survivalist and return to basics?   The characters represent and advocate the different approaches. Ruth is full of middle class guilt and compromise, so advocates organic farming and a few pigs, whilst Millie (Nadia Par...

 A story about a Black seamstress in the early part of the 20th century, this is a small and delicately woven piece.  A small ensemble cast, with an excellent Samira Wiley in the centre, unfold the story carefully.  Esther is 35 and fears she is left on the shelf, but she is saving money through her work sewing gorgeous undergarments for her female clientele, and she plans to open a beauty parlour with the money one day.    But out of the blue come letters from George, a man she has never met, currently working on building the Panama canal.  Through her friends and clients helping her with the letters, a romance develops despite their relationship only coming from letters.  Alongside this is a sweet and unspoken romance with a Jewish fabric salesman (Alex Waldmann), wooing Esther with ever more gorgeous fabrics.  But this delicate little romance comes to nothing when Esther marries George at the end of the first half. The second half is packed wit...

  At the Donmar, this revival of Patrick Mather’s play about masculinity, gambling,and fathers and sons  is sharp and properly funny, although all versions of these men are lying to themselves as well as everyone else  Women are hardly relevant in this at all as the men banter and argue and their different relationships and motivations are uncovered.   Stephen  (Daniel Lapaine) owns a restaurant and runs a Sunday night poker night after hours for his staff but really as a way of connection with his gambling addicted son, Carl (a fragile Kasper Hilton-Hille).  Meanwhile Chef Sweeney (Theo Barklem-Biggs)knows he has a gambling problem and tries to resist so he can spend his money with his daughter.  Frankie (Alfie Allen) is cocky and a bad loser but wants to become a professional poker player.  Ash (Brendan Coyle in his tough guy mode) is an already a professional gambler and second father figure to Carl , although we find that he is proba...

Backstroke, a new play by Anna Mackmin at the Donmar is a bit of a mixed bag but the cast including Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig was a very good reason to take a look. The play opens with Beth (Celia Imrie) in a hospital bed and Bo (Tamsin Grieg) her middle aged and flustered daughter trying to deal with hospital staff whilst following her mother’s wishes and at the same time, manage, long distance, a crisis with her own daughter.  At first I thought this might be a dementia and death play, and to a certain extent it is, but very quickly the play starts to jump backwards and forwards in time, seeming randomly, each scene exploring more of the difficult relationship between the two women. In the first half we have learnt that Beth is not an ideal mother. In the second half though it becomes clear that this is a more nuanced story about mothers and daughters.  We begin to see a more rounded picture, and that Beth and Bo have had moments of joy, closeness and mutual support mixed...

 I love the Donmar as a theatre, even when, as on this occasion, I am in the back row of the circle in the horrid high seats.  And with this production, in the round, and with the lights kept up, implicating us all in the events on stage, there is even more opportunity for people watching than usual.  I was particularly taken with the woman who held the programme up to the side of her face for the whole of the first half, then kept a scarf wrapped over her nose and mouth for most of the second.  Was there a bad smell?  Did she have toothache? And of course there were always the few who looked like they were dropping off. So what about the actual play?  Well this is a radical rethink, with a hippy feel and significant rework of the text, making it much swearier and up to date in general.  And it had lots of music added, particularly in the second half, plus a conscious effort to involve the audience in the action, to the extent of getting audience membe...

After some strange shenanigans with tickets at the Donmar, we ended up with much better seats than we started with and, as I was potentially going to be one of those annoying people with a cough, I was also pleased to see we were next to an aisle so I could make an escape if needed.  However, the aisle turned out to be the main thoroughfare for the many, many scene changes, with beds, sofas and trolleys rattling past my knees every minute or so, adding a whole level of jeopardy I hadn’t expected.   The play was one of quite a few around at the moment, set at the difficult birth of the NHS.  In this case with Keeley Hawes playing Iris, a woman GP and Labour councillor campaigning to get the NHS started against the opposition of doctors (including her husband) and also trying to be a good wife and mother.  The different post war gendered experiences are laid out very clearly here with women being pushed back into the home, whilst men are dealing with the mental an...

The first striking thing about this production is that it is almost completely monochrome,  A large white stage with a dark glass backdrop, all of the cast in black or grey, except Lady Macbeth (Cush Jumbo) in glowing white.  This means that you can't miss the blood. The play opens with a bloodied Macbeth (David Tennant) washing himself clean, bloodying the bowl of water, bringing red into that monochrome colour scheme,  and then we are into the play proper with the disembodied witches swirling around in our ears.    We were in the cheap seats as usual, but as ever in this intimate theatre it doesn’t make too much difference. Apart from a few times when sight lines didn't work for those of us in the circle, we were so close to the action that we didn't miss much.  This is a tight ensemble cast, all excellent, and I loved the broad Scottishness of it all, from the accents to the music.  This was a fairly short version of the play at 1 hour 55 minutes wi...