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 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...