Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

So, another year, another crop of great stuff, and another set of opinions you didn't ask for but are getting anyway.  I am having to be brutal in my selections here as there as so many great things I couldn't shoehorn in.   I have linked to my original thoughts too, where I have already published them. Best revival of a play So many great plays, many of them revivals this year, so I am working on the basis that the play needs to be properly old to fit into this category, and there needs to be something different from the original production.  There were many also rans, but the nominees are: Macbeth:  At the Donmar, with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo, this is a play I usually don't actually like very much, spoiled I think by studying it at school.  I was also suspicious about the use of headphones throughout, expecting that it would be distancing from the action.  In fact, it did the opposite; having the protaganists whisper their soliliquy direct into...

I was expecting this to be a bit camp and funny, it’s Oscar Wilde with Ncuti Gatwa after all, but this packed house had such a lot of fun squeezed into it from the very first scene.  The set is Bridgerton bright, and the costumes are spectacular, from Gatwa’s pink ballgown to Lady Bracknell’s gorgeous outfits and hats. Let's start with the stately star of the show, Sharon D Clarke as Lady Bracknell, in this iteration as a fierce Caribbean matriarchal battleaxe who will stand no nonsense.  I loved the delivery of ‘a handbag’ where it was kept fresh and funny but not at all as I’m sure we all say it in our heads.  Whenever she was on stage she was the centre that everyone revolved around - a comic delight. Cecily (Eliza Scanlen) has a touch of  Violet Elizabeth from Just William about her while Gwendoline (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjois) is played as a similarly determined and entitled young woman.  Like everything else in this production their performances are dialled up to ...