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

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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...

Film: Troubled teens

Saturday I caught a series of shorts about troubled teens at the London Gay and Lesbian film festival. Who knew there was so much angst out there among teens?

 

Later that evening I was with a few friends who told me that they were not really into the film fest. I couldn't understand this especially given the quality of the shorts that I saw on Saturday. They may have been your typical boy is friends with a boy and one boy is a little bit gay and so one day the other boy jerks him off and now they don't talk to each other stories, but it is all in the acting and direction…

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