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...

My main reason for seeing this play was its amazing cast of Deborah Findlay. Gina McKee, Romola Garai with Anjli Mohindra and Harmony-Rose Bremner, all playing ‘Annie’ from small child to older age to create a powerful but playful story of a life.  The whole cast is on stage for the whole performance, with each age introduced with a tableau.  Annie strikes a pose for a snapshot to set the scene in front of a white sheet as a backdrop; a fresh page added for each chunk of the story with the narrative handed on from one iteration of Annie to the next.   This is a history of the last 60 years through one woman’s life, taking in politics and world events, cultural and sexual change through the decades with collective memories of different times but focusing on the intensely personal experiences of one woman.  I loved the depictions of moving through the generations, but with the essential woman still present.  It felt like it struck exactly the right note of li...