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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...

Music: Karen Akers

Karen Akers is playing at Pizza on the Park this week. Ms Akers is probably not so well known in London, but she was in the original Broadway cast of Nine and Grand Hotel. She also had a small role in the film Heartburn. These things I know, but she has also spent a lot of time in the last thirty years just recording and performing songs in her own way. This way is mostly a dark alluring alto voice which would make you do anything for her... Her ability to sing a song and hold your gaze might also have something to do with it...

Sitting in the front row it could be a little unnerving at times... particularly when you have Johnnyfox serenading her back on your right, and a crazy looking Dutch man at the table on your left looking at her with a wide-eyed fascination that couldn't be healthy (well I think that's what his wife sitting next to him and clutching him was thinking)... At one stage he looked as if he was about to get on stage and help her with her microphone stand when it became a bit stuck... When she tells the audience "I was grabbing it at the wrong end" that was not a comment that our table could let hang there without some schoolboy tittering...

Tonight she was singing was the music of Cole Porter. Her interpretation of the songs make them feel as if they are new. It was amazing to watch her turn a song like "Don't Fence Me In" into something that could almost be a torch song... Songs like "I Love Paris" gave her a chance to sing in French as well.

An evening to meditate over Cole Porter was not what I was expecting but I was sure glad to have been there to see it. Her show runs through to Sunday and worth catching.

This is probably the last time I will be at Pizza on the Park... Soon its funky artwork and low ceiling room will be a thing of the past... So it was only appropriate that a final semi-coherrent audio-boo captured those lasting impressions... Some of which are not quite accurate... She isn't old for instance, she is only sixty-five...

Listen!

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