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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...

Scenes from Harrods Saturday 16:30.

The last day of the Harrods sale brought all the punters out for an extra 20% off.

A wanted to get some more dinner plates, but not these ones after I suggested that they looked like you could get them at John Lewis. He settled for something much smarter. Later I bought a couple of shirts, so a sensible round of shopping was had by all.

It was actually the first time I set foot in Harrods, so A was keen to give me the grand tour (but I declined the offer to see the Dodi and Di memorial). While it is a tacky Egyptian bazaar with clothes, crockery, this and that piled up on top of each other in no real sense of logic or organisation, it still does have a certain charm about it...

Still as one sees the fading grandeur of the building and the cracked and dirty tiles in the food hall, it seems like there is a (very) small part of English shopping history that is slowly decaying away... And nobody really seems to notice as they snap up the Harrods bags and bears.Posted by Picasa

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