Posts

Showing posts from December, 2005

Featured Post

A Man For All Seasons: Seagull True Story - Marylebone Theatre

Image
It's not often that you see a play that tells you not so much a story but gives you a sense of how it feels to be in a situation, how it feels to be silenced, how it feels to be marginalised, how the dead hand of consensus stifles your creativity. However, in Seagull True Story, created and directed by Alexander Molochnikov and based on his own experiences fleeing Russia and trying to establish himself in New York, we have a chance to look beyond the headlines and understand how the war in Ukraine impacted a a group of ordinary creatives in Russia. And how the gradual smothering of freedom and freedom of expression becomes impossible to resist, except for the brave or the suicidal. Against the backdrop of Chekhov's The Seagull, which explores love and other forms of disappointment, it presents a gripping and enthralling depiction of freedom of expression in the face of adversity. After playing earlier this year in New York, it plays a limited run at the Marylebone Theatre . Fro...
Image
Scenes from various parts of London Thursday evening. I kept getting the strangest of looks on the tube home with my luggage covered in plastic wrap. It was if I was carrying Laura Palmer home. Cling-wrapping your luggage probably isn't as popular here as it is in Australia as Londoners don't know that loud mouthed drug smuggler from the Gold Coast otherwise known as Schapelle Corby . I got the "Schapelle Wrap" as I wasn't confident that the zips would contain the 30kg of stuff contained within, and I didn't want my Aussiebum pants flying all over the cargo hold, rather than over any concern about what baggage handlers in Brisbane would do with them (or stick in amongst them)... Of course since everyone in Australia now is paranoid about 4kg's of dope being inserted by Brisbane baggage handlers the wrap is de rigeur. Incidentally while in Oz I heard a new jingle: Don't blame it on the sunshine, Don't blame it on the Bali Nine, Don't blame it o...
Image
Scenes from Heathrow Thursday 19:36 - After nearly an hour at immigration (where someone was arrested after walking around for 10 minutes yelling out what sounded like "Stella" in another language), Paul walks back into London... Incidentally as the plane was getting ready to land one could glimpse all the major landmarks of London (Tower Bridge, Westminster, The Eye etc)... Just another winter's night in London. Oh and it wasn't as cold as I was expecting... Temperatures were somewhere above zero for most of the night...