Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

A play about morality, hypocrisy and women’s place in a capitalist world, despite being well over a century old  and in Victorian dress (written in 1893 and banned from performance until 1925)  many of the arguments being made in this play could be happening today. Vivie (Bessie Carter) is a modern young woman and has just graduated from Cambridge, with plans for a professional career.  Her mother (Imelda Staunton) has been largely absent due to travel and business affairs but today she pays a visit, expecting her daughter to conform to becoming a genteel young woman and marry well. Staunton as Kitty is as impressive as you would expect.  I loved the mix of grand airs all being undercut slightly by the London twang underlying her accent.  The four men appearing in the play are a mix of entitled, arrogant, selfish, immoral, venal or just plain unpleasant.  Robert Glenister (excellent as Sir George Crofts)is the embodiment of grasping bullying capitalism, we ...

This play, For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy is inspired by Ntozake Shange’s For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide /When the Rainbow is Enuf.   It was a moving but also uplifting piece of theatre that I was properly glad to join in a standing ovation for.   Using the framework of a therapy session, the few hours on the stage are filled with dance, poetry, song and, most importantly, stories from Black boys lives.  Exploring what it means to be Black British and male, it journeys through love, school, racism, colourism, what language does, and the stereotypes and expectations these young men face. ‘What age were you when you found out you were scary?’.  This is a sometimes affectionate, but often brutal summary of what Black masculinity is, what it isn’t, but also what it could be. Properly funny and with well chosen song and dance to change our mood as well as being beautifully woven into the stories.  Great per...