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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: Nine



Back in London, a good cure for jet-lag is a movie... Although watching the movie musical Nine was probably not the best option... Only curiosity to see if it would get any worse kept me awake. The fatal flaw of this movie is to cast Daniel Day Lewis - a creepy actor at the best of times (as the above interview junket for the film shows) - in a role that required the audience to have some element of sympathy for him. It also doesn't help that in between the musical numbers there is some absolutely dire dialogue mostly set in hotel rooms spoken by actors with outraaaaeegeeshly leeedicrious accents. Best (or should that be worst) is Nicole Kidman's which varies from eeetaylian to okker Aussie mid sentence. It was hilarious even if her screen time was brief.

There are some nice numbers sung by women in various types of pantyhose but after the best number in the movie - A Call From the Vatican - you feel like you could be Penelope Cruz's gynaecologist. Director Rob Marshall managed to strip any sense of sexiness out of Chicago and he again does it with Nine. Even worse is that he allows Sophia Loren (in what could be her swan song) to look like a drag queen. Judi Dench's character has been relegated to costume designer, singing a French song with an English accent or having to speak some pretty cringeworthy dialogue. Other cast members come of slightly better, although here's hoping that no future musicals have songs with lyrics that use "neo-realism"...

A pity really as it probably could have been a better film, even if the show it is based on isn't much of a story it has some great set piece numbers (many of which have been cut for the film or rewritten). Going by the box office takings it will disappear shortly. Go if your curious, or stuck for a decent film at the cinema that isn't a a 3D James Cameron epic... Otherwise look for it on bit torrent...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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