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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...

Last chance for something completely different: Karagula @wearepigdog


In it’s final week in a disused bar in Tottenham is Philip Ridley’s Karagula.

It’s an amibitious dystopian work that has been baffling audiences for the past month. There are various worlds coliding in the piece. Time and narrative shifts to tell a story of rebellion against totalitarian regimes.



One regime insists the world should be 1950s apple pie and milkshakes. Anyone who challenges this gets shot. Or they just shoot people anyway. Another world dispenses with all sorts of personal traits and wears white suits and talk calmly and malevolently...

There are also tales from primitive societies and what could be the forerunner of a new religion.

Anyway it’s ambitious, mind boggling physical theatre in an unforgiving space... Not Tottenham, but the cavernous empty Styx bar space which serves as the backdrop for this crazy adventure.


I caught an early preview of it and I have avoided milkshakes ever since. But you can catch it and have a Neopolitan-style pizza in the forecourt of the venue before the show. Or spend time there at interval wondering what’s it all about.

A production from emerging company PIGDOG, which aims to use experimental forms of theatre to explore a range of issues, including accessibility, equality and gender politics.

Karagula concludes this week on 9 July. It certainly is something for those that like their theatre to be a little bit different...

Photo credit: production photos by Lara Genovese / Naiad Photography


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