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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...

Movies: Sunshine


Murphy looking all wistful...

With all the flat hunting that has been taking up my time in the past few weeks I have not had the chance to see any theatre. Such a shame as everytime I write something about the theatre I get at least an extra person reading this site. And I have been informed that my site ranks up there on Google when you type in Elaine Paige's Tits so that gives me good theatre cred surely...

Anyway, I did manage to catch the film Sunshine on Saturday. It is part 2001 A Space Odyssey, part Alien and part Stargate. But anyway, Cillian Murphy even looks a bit like Sigourney Weaver (and conjures up a little of Jaye Davidson as Ra in Stargate too).

The plot involves a mission to restore the dying sun. It starts off slowly and maintains this pace throughout. Some people have told me they felt the film was boring, pretentious rubbish but anything that plays homage to 2001, while throwing in some strange weirdo alien being that has had a bit too much sun can't be all that bad. There are some nice themes of morality and religion that play here as well...

I could have done with less fight scenes and a little more ambiguity. Although the ending with its shaky camera and distorted effects is so ambiguous I took to guessing how it actually ended... Hmm maybe I should go to the theatre. At least you can see what is happening there...

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