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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...

Lost in the city: Ordinary Days @OrdinaryDaysLDN @draytonarmsSW5

Life goes on whether you like it or not in Ordinary Days. A great little musical currently running at the Drayton Arms Theatre.

At first glance this story of two couples coming together could be confused for yet another quirky New York-y musical... Like the dreary I Love You, You’re Perfect Now Change or I Love You Because. But Adam Gwon’s songs explore loneliness and wasted time in a big city and give this piece a lot of heart. And perhaps a few tears.

The premise if four people lost in New York and coming together. They find something about each other and themselves in the process.

There’s Warren (Neil Cameron) the struggling artist and cat sitter. Deb (Nora Perone) the student with an implausible thesis. Jason (Taite-Elliot Drew) who’s moving in with his girlfriend. And Claire (Natalie Day) who’s making room for her boyfriend, but not much.

Through a series of songs each character gets to tell their story. The songs, like their lives, are at first compartmentalised. But over the course of the piece as the characters get mixed up in each other’s lives, things become more complex.

Cameron and Perone provide the comic relief in the piece and have the most fun with their roles as an unlikely friendship develops.

Day as the distant Claire excels delivering the emotional “I’ll be here” toward the end of the piece. It’s a song that’s already been widely recorded. Including by Audra McDonald, who included it in her concerts earlier this year in London. With its understated yet economical lyrics, its a sublime piece of writing.

Gwon won the 2008 Fred Ebb award for excellence in musical theatre writing with this piece. He also contributed to songs on the rather funny broadway webseries Submissions Only.

With Rowland Braché as musical director on keyboard, this is a night of musical theatre not to miss.

Directed by Jen Coles, Ordinary Days continues at the Drayton Arms Theatre until 9 December.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Photos by Natalie Lomako

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