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...

The last time I saw this revenge tragedy must be more than 40 years ago and I remember it being a violent and bloody misery fest.  But this version has Jodie Whittaker so when I spotted a last minute discount ticket in the stalls I couldn’t resist. Whittaker is impressive from the start, commanding the stage and running rings around her childish, cartoonish, controlling brothers as she relishes her freedom after being widowed.  She continues to confidently hold the reins as she secretly marries her weak but sweet steward.  So far so good, but all falls to pieces pretty quickly from there.   The first half of this production is actually a bit of a mess, disjointed and with some strange decisions around direction, the text and which scenes to keep or cut.  With modern dress and setting, the original language is almost completely ditched by Zinnie Harris in this version, and the focus is resolutely on the misogyny and aggressive patriarchy which cannot let a w...

  A good on-the-day deal from TodayTix meant that I finally got to see this Olivier winning play and actor.  In the traverse staging and in subject matter it reminded me quite a lot of The Effect (which I wrote about here ).   And I found the sound design really powerful too.  The main draw here though is the stunning performance from Denise Gough as ‘Emma’ an addict and actor we first meet slurring her way through a production of The Seagull before she heads into rehab.  It’s a clever and, in the end, devastating move to have Sinead Cusack play both therapists and Emma’s mother.  There’s quite a lot here about the many layers and multiple personalities that actors adopt, all fake, and the camaraderie and friendship that only lasts as long as the production which give nice parallels to the rehab process.  Capturing the complexity of addiction and the many layers of deviousness, cause and effect, the difficulty of untangling abuse and abuser this h...