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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: Nocturne

I found myself at the Almeida on Friday night watching Nocturne, thanks to some some spare tickets Sue had because she had to go to a summer barbecue.

This is a one-man show written by Adam Rapp and performed by Peter McDonald. There was something slightly unnerving about sitting in a theatre on a warm summer night watching a monologue about a man who accidentally kills his sister. It wasn't exactly summer fun and that might have explained why the theatre was a little empty. Perhaps it was the night for barbecues and drinking rather than monolgoues. Still the performance and story was strangely captivating. At times it was like you were at the edge of your seat, knowing you were about to hear something awful but keen to hear how he accidentally decapitated his younger sister.

I have been wary of watching monologues ever since I endured the pretentious and coma-enducing one-man Macbeth. Fortunately there was none of that here and McDonald's performance was incredible to watch. At times still all this guilt and memory and impotence was heavy going (which may be the production's fault), but overall there was something still quite remarkable about it.

I dragged David along to see it and after the show we had quite an intriguing conversation about all the ways you could lose your head. None of which included going to see monolgoues on a hot summer night so I am assuming he didn't mind it either. It is now off to Edinburgh Fringe.

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