Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner play the charismatic dissolute and scheming villains who toy with love and lust in their struggle for power in this gorgeous adaptation by Marianne Elliott    Marquise de Merteuil (Lesley Manville), and society rake, Vicomte de Valmont (Aidan Turner) set up a scheme to seduce an innocent girl just out of convent school, and an upright and an honourable young wife.  As the plot unwinds they realise that they are risking more than they thought.    There’s a deceptively spare and modern set at the start, which is populated as needed by swirling walls and doors that create privacy and exposure  The  costumes here are gorgeous, shown at their best by the choreography that builds the mood and is used, particularly in the second half to illustrate both  the passion and violence and give us a sense of what is really going on under the surface.   Lesley Manville, as always is fantastic, so contained and precise, a...

This is a hit play that has been around for quite some time although it has only got to London this summer. A uplifting play about mental health, depression and the small joys of life, with one performer telling the story of their mother and something of their own life with the help of audience members.  The different performers plus the audience interaction means it is different each night and in this run we have already had Lenny Henry, Sue Perkins, Ambika Mod and Jonny Donahoe (one of the original co-creators) .   When we arrived, Minnie Driver, the final performer in this run, was already bustling around the auditorium, talking to audience members as they arrived, and handing out cards.  We were in the gods so too far away to be involved. The actual play itself is pretty short but effective, and I absolutely get why the audience were given the cards to read out, although I couldn’t always hear what was being said, depending on how loud or where in the auditorium ...

Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman are excellent in this intense but very funny two hander.  Luka (Lowden) is looking for a sponsor to help him through his AA programme and James (Freeman) is the older man who steps into that role.  Luka is a bundle of nervous energy, bouncing legs and fidgeting, whereas James is suave and under control.   The play looks at what it means to put your trust in someone or something else, whether that’s a person. a programme or a religion and what happens when that turns out to be imperfect.  And it explores those themes very well.  But also, it’s very funny, with quick and smart lines thrown out with perfect timing for us to catch.  The laughs are so fast and frequent it’s possible to forget that there is also a drama there too. I liked the musical choices too, opening with 'I ’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)' by Johnny Cash and an addict himself of course, which set the scene for what was co...

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...

  Seeing the first of these plays last was not necessarily the best way to go about this, but it still worked.  Another on-the-day ticket, this time up in the first balcony but with an excellent view. ‘Michael' (an excellent Thomas Coombes) appears to be a stereotypical white working class man, no longer young or married. His Dad has just died as England lost the Euros on penalties and he is trying to make sense of that, his life, and also his Dad.  Michael's dad represents a kind of Englishness - East End, Leighton Orient fan, full of nationalist racist rhetoric, tribal, a Brexit fan, but also kind to his son’s Black best friend Delroy and his mum. Keen on ‘tradition’ in both good and bad senses, but also community minded.   As we find over the course of the performance, both Michael and his dad are a lot more than the caricatures would suggest.  Coombes doesn’t stop for breath throughout the 105 minutes on stage, and it’s a powerful performance, leaping a...

First, let’s get it out there that I think Paapa Essiedu is an impressive actor so I was really pleased to get an on-the-day ticket for a second row seat to see his performance as Delroy.  I really like the auditorium at Soho Place, I don’t think there is a bad seat anywhere, but this was a particularly  good view although sometimes a bit uncomfortably close to the action. This 100 minute long monologue is intense, even more so in this intense space with eye contact possible with every member of the audience, adding to the engagement, or maybe complicity we feel.  And as ‘Delroy’, or maybe Essiedu, may well ask you a specific question and expect an answer we’d better be paying attention. I have somehow been seeing this trilogy of state of the nation plays in reverse order.  I saw the third (Closing Time) last year, but I still need to book to see the first one (Michael), annoyingly I missed Rafe Spall as Michael in the first iteration because I was ill.  Doing i...