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, ...

A two and a half hour play about climate conferences doesn’t sound like the most appealing of evenings but this was edge of the seat stuff from start to finish.  Documenting the 10 years of delay from the first serious UN climate conferences, we first see the role of the oil companies and their partners in obfuscating and demonising the science, setting parties against each other and forming unholy allowances.  Then it moves on to focus on the conference which finally got agreement.   The set is a circular conference table and all audience members are given their lanyard and pass as they enter (I was the Norwegian delegate) with some of the front row actually sitting at the table.  In a clever move, it is a charming villain who is our guide here, in the form of Don Perlman (Stephen Kunken) who was a climate sceptic, oil lobbyist lawyer and an active disrupter of agreements, and who weaponises the specific interests of each country against each other.  He al...