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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...

Theatre: Burn not chatroom then citizenship...

Monday night I forgot I was at the National Theatre again to see "Burn, Chatroom and Citizenship" – three new one-act plays. Except that they only perform two and I was stuck with "Burn" during the first half. It was a bit of a bore, although had some nice commentary about social workers and car stealing. The second half was "Citizenship" and it was much more lively and funnier (no surprise when it was written by Mark Ravenhill of "Shopping and Fucking" fame). The tale about a boy who sees a girl and gets her pregnant while looking for a gay relationship was pretty funny. The characters and dialogue were fantastic (even if the plot was a bit suspect)…

The crowd was a very young crowd as these performances were originally performed at the NT last year by school children, and they all have yoof feemes and all that… So once you got past the audience belching and laughing at the wrong parts it was a good night out…  

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