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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...

Theatre: Rock and Roll

Finally caught Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'N' Roll before it closes at the end of this month. It has been playing since last summer and has caught the imagination of the critics and the punters. The background of the story is the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the links a family in Cambridge have to the country. The central message is that there is no freedom without creative freedom and that's something that I could agree with. There is a wonderful scene where an old British communist after the collapse of the old regimes in 1990 smashes a plate. Was it all just a waste of time? Or do the new democracies appreciate what they have more than those in the west? Who can say but plenty of food for thought...

The original cast have moved on but even with the second cast headed by Dominic West (who is terrific) kept the pace going, even when it was a bit on the long side. I get the impression that even though the play finishes its run in February, it's going to be around for some time...

Walking out of the theatre afterwards, there were plenty of people wondering what it was all about they had seen, not to mention where they were when they first heard the many music clips peppered throughout the production...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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