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The brown word: Death on the Throne @gatehouselondon

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We’re warned at the start of the show with an upbeat number that this is not the usual sort of musical. And it turns out to be just that. But with boundless enthusiasm and energy from its two leads, who deploy a range of voices and breathtaking energy to create a series of voices for puppet characters, a bedtime story becomes a silly oddball tale about four souls stuck in purgatory. With puppets. And various toilet humour references. It’s currently playing at Upstairs At The Gatehouse . The piece starts as a bedtime story. Daddy (Mark Underwood) is about to read a bedtime story for Louise (Sarah Louise Hughes). But her stomach felt funny, and soon, she went to the bathroom. Then, for reasons that seem to only make sense in the confines of the show, they start telling the story of four people who died in unfortunate circumstances in the bathroom. Depicted as puppets, they’re stuck in purgatory as St Peter doesn’t have enough space for each of them in the afterlife. And so begins a puppe...
Some goings on about town worth writing home about (or not)!

La

At £20 ($A50) for a CD album I have decided that if I want to purchase music I will be doing it from amazon.com. But I couldn't resist at HMV on Oxford St the newly remastered and expanded Original Broadway Cast recording of "Nine" for £10. Besides, I need more new music to listen to on the 40-50 minutes it takes in the bus and tube to get from door to door. Not that one needs an excuse to listen to show tunes (although some may disagree), but they are mentally stimulating enough to listen to while in transit!

Super

(Supermarket Chain) Tescos are apparently hiring more staff for the Christmas season ... But what about now? It takes about 15 minutes to buy lunch.

Slower

The much anticipated postal strike looks set to happen in London. But will anyone notice the difference? Royal Mail appears to be a place that employs the unemployable, which is all fine and good for noble social reasons, but if you have to wait half an hour to buy stamps for postcards, you can appreciate why email is the way to go.

Rain on Blaine

Despite the rain, the David Blaine stunt has still been attracting the usual spoilers. Most recently a group of hoping to give david a burst of anarchic meditation.

Chatrooms no more

Microsoft has shut down all its chatrooms in the UK, not because they were crap, but because they were worried about adults preying on youngsters .

It comes after the hysteria surrounding a recent report suggesting one in five children aged nine to 16 regularly use chatrooms, of those more than half have engaged in sex chat, and a quarter have received requests to meet face-to-face and one in 10 had met face-to-face, but only two fifths of one in forty swallowed. (Sorry that last part was not part of the Cyberspace Research Centre report, July 2003)

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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