Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

I saw this a few weeks ago ( notes here ) and despite some reservations, I really was blown away by the performances.  I also felt it had taken me a while to properly get to grips with it the first time around, and as it isn’t the sort of thing that gets recorded for posterity I grabbed a last minute bargain ticket in the front row of the circle to watch it again.   Everything I said about it the first time is still true, an intimate play with big themes, about two young men trying to find their place in a world which doesn’t really have space for their dreams, living small lives in small towns which are not where the action is*.  I like the way that the big stories of the western colonialist expansion, tales of derring do which are used to create a great national story, are nicely undercut through Lewis and Clark’s 1804-6 expedition diaries, talking about the realities of hard travel, bad food, mixed with appalling racism and exploitation of the native peoples and s...

Despite the underpinning themes of American colonialism and the westward landgrab vs modern America, this is a suprisingly intimate play, although as it is written by Samuel D Hunter who wrote The Whale  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.   Jake, a well to do liberal arts graduate has been following the westward trail towards the Pacific taken by his ancestor, but he washes up 300 miles short in the small town of Clarkston and gets a night job in Costco where he meets Chris.  Chris is trying to get into a writing course, but has an addict mum to worry about.  So that’s the set up, which doesn’t sound particularly promising but this ends up being a tender play about people trying to find connection and make the best of their lives, despite the challenges they face.  It’s a bit clunky with the amount of exposition, but the central performances are excellent and I found myself drawn into the lives and concerns of the young men.   Joe Locke plays Jak...