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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...

Dirty stop out: Dirty Great Love Story @ArtsTheatreLDN


Dirty Great Love Story at the Arts Theatre is casual sex described through poetry. After a one night stand two hopeless romantics then spend the next few years trying to avoid each other. While speaking mostly in rhyming verse.

The only problem with this premise is that if the rhyming isn't particular clever you have a bit of a problem what the point of it all is. Even Pam Ayres is funny. Here it is mostly perplexing and the verse gets in the way of everything else.


The drama and comedy is derived from their different perspectives on their first encounter. From her point of view, he is a mistake who keeps popping up at parties and generally being an irritant. For him, she is perfect.

Things pick up towards the end as the comedy reaches its inevitable conclusion but by this point you might have given up.

As the unlikely couple Felix Scott and Ayesha Antoine keep the momentum and manage to convey meaning out of the flimsiest of dialogue and rhyme.

This was a hit at Edinburgh in 2012, but today it feels dated. Hen nights and drinking in bars all night at clubs seems curious in the era of Tinder.

Perhaps it needs the smaller space (and a shorter running time) to make it feel more naturalistic. Or the theatre isn't the place for two-handed romantic comedies.

Written by Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna and directed by Pia Furtado, Dirty Great Love Story is at the Arts Theatre until 18 March.



⭐︎⭐︎

Photo credit: Richard Davenport for The Other Richard








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