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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...
Music: What I'm Listening to - Kristen Chenoweth

Downloaded a Kristen Chenoweth album off iTunes last night. She's showy and she's brassy and she's loud... But her album had many songs I weren't familiar with so it was aIt has this wonderful little ditty written by Comden & Green called "If" with lyrics that include:


IF: you had been on the square, and had treated me fair, and we'd not had a tiff…
IF: you had not said I should go and jump right off the nearest cliff!
IF: You had stayed off the make, and you never had taken to coming home stiff.
IF: I hand not smelled perfume with a nasty unfamiliar whiff!
I'm gonna miss you baby
Things could've been teriff!
Ah, what's the diff…


...Amen to that honey!

Actually while we are on the subject of music that I listen to, a colleague at work saw me on the tube a few weeks back in my own little iPOD world. He had his own music so I didn't interrupt. We don't work together so that was fine. Time passes and then just this week he came into the office and asked what I was listening to that day he saw me on the tube. I had no idea what I was listening to. When you have an iPOD it makes you very odd in that you shuffle tracks from Brahms to Britney. Of course in reality I am sure what I was listening to was A New Brain - which is a musical about a NY gay Jewish man who gets a brain tumor - so to sound more mainstream I said I was listening to Rufus Wainwright. This led to a whole discussion on Vic Chesnutt, Tom Waits and various other artists he likes and I am quite partial to as well. The conversation ended with a promise of a "mix tape" or CD of some his vast record collection...

Being a suspicious person living and working in very suspicious times I made some discreet enquiries into the motivation here. Haven't come up with anything yet, so will have to wait and see whether I get a CD I suppose...

Sunday working hard

Today I Finally joined a gym. It took a while to get it all together, but now will have to make it a regular activity. I will also try and find a place to live that works in well with the trip home...

After 25 minutes cardio I have realised that a year and a half of non-gym activity has taken its toll. I am not very fit. Fortunately I was not alone in that department so I wasn't exercising in shame...

It is a fantastic gym as well full of great equipment and the rest so that is enough to spur on the motivation I think...

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