Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

 A day out in London took me first to see the new Marilyn Monroe exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, followed by a brief wander through Tate Modern before ending the day at the Globe for a glorious production of Much Ado About Nothing. First, the Monroe exhibition which was extensive, organised by her life story and relationships with different photographers over the years including Philip Hausman, Cecil Beaton and her close collaborator for on-set photography, Eve Arnold.   It was interesting how closely she curated her image, having control over which proofs got to see the light of day and which were banished (until now) to obscurity by Monroe's pen through the image. Ironic how that control vanished after her death. There were plenty of stories about her being difficult and fighting with the studios, but it is interesting to see how many of them were her not wanting to be put in the dumb blonde box.  Her story is so well known but there were plenty of pho...

The Merry Wives of Windsor is playing at Shakespeare’s Globe and we grabbed a £5 standing ticket.  This is one of Shakespeare’s sitcom plays with short, silly episodes of mucking about.  The Globe is good at this stuff, and fairly quickly had us all laughing along.  This is the one where Falstaff decides to seduce two married women to get himself some cash, but they decide to trick him back.  Lots of over the top characters squeezing every laugh and double entendre they can out of every line, it was a lot of fun.  The treatment of Falstaff (played with cheeky charm by George Fouracres) at the end was perhaps a bit much for a modern audience so although it’s made light of there was also some uncomfortable shuffling of feet around me.  And I liked the way that they brought out the unpleasantness of Mistress Ford’s husband, which stays unresolved and leaves a bit of a sour taste.  But just under 3 hours of good quality entertainment for a fiver is an abso...

An evening at the Globe in the company of a non-male cast, this was the theatre using its pantomime tendencies almost exclusively for good.   Michelle Terry gives us full force toxic masculinity with a blonde wig, a fake six pack and braggadocio posturing that leaves us in no doubt of Richard’s character.  With references to 'making England great again', and self-aggrandising speeches, sometimes with a hint of an American accent, there there were plenty of references to Trump.  And if we were any doubt, the red baseball caps worn by Richard's supporters in the second half ought to clear that up.   The thing about Richard of course is that he is so deliciously bad it can't help being fun, and so there are lots and lots of laughs to be had.  For the first half the crowd is hyped up to cheer and go along with Richard’s tyranny but the switch to understanding what are the consequences of not standing firm are really deftly handled in the second half, with ...

My busy weekend started out with a visit to Dominic West's version of Eddie in A View from the Bridge .  A fairly traditional interpretation, what I did find interesting was that Eddie's increasingly toxic behaviour was still being laughed at by the audience, which I found really strange.  In the second half, the first kiss got the appropriate hiss/gasp of shock, but the second one, which is surely one of the cruxes of the play, got some gasps but also quite a lot of laughter - what was that about?  Apart from that, the modern resonances around immigration and fragile working class masculinity still hold I think.  I liked Callum Scott Howell's portrayal of Rodolpho too, a proud man who refuses to conform to the stereotypes and hostility he faces as an illegal immigrant, although his italian accent was a bit flaky.  In this version I felt a fair bit of sympathy for Eddie who doesn't understand himself, living in a world he doesn't understand, and I think that is ...