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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...
Things the guidbooks should tell you to take while riding the tube:

* Torch. You never know when the power is going to go out and you are stuck somewhere dark and unpleasant.
* Water. Not just for drinking but washing off all that tube dust when you get stuck in a tunnel and have to walk out.
* Steel capped boots. So the mutant mice dont bite your feet while you are walking in the tunnel back to the station.
* Crash helmet. No trains have derailed today but they seem to be happening every second day of late...
* Padded clothing. You may be secure in your position but Betty next to you might be too engrossed in some tawdry magazine to be holding on to the handrails.

The Northern Line has been out of action in Central London for today while they figure out how to get the train out of Camden Town station... Lets hope it doesn't take them too long to figure that one out...

Squidgy knew she would get squashed is the fun news of the day... The Daily Mirror (not known for delivering news so it runs this as its headline on the day of a tube derailment and Blair's health scare) broke the news as part of ex-butler-and-minder-of-her-things-and-not-a-thief Paul Burrell's tell all book.


Handwriting experts have confirmed she wrote the letter (hell I have seen copies of letters from Diana so I could have said that), but that doesn't confirm whether she was out of her tiny little mind. The conspiracy theories will linger forever, but she was the silly one who didn't wear a seatbelt...

Odd bits
* David Blaine is out and he isn't dead.
* Tony Blair is not dead either. He was having an irregular heartbeat and reports indicate it wasn't over the price of a flat.

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