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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...
Theatre: His Dark Materials Part II

Snapped up a front row seat to see His Dark Materials Part II at the Olivier theatre. Based on the stories of Phillip Pullman, they have turned it into two three hour plays that cover epic journeys, religion, morality, good and evil and so on and so on...

I figured Part I may have covered a lot of exposition in its three hour length, and so the three hours of Part II may have been more about the action. It actually doesn't work out like that (given both parts have different stories to tell) but anyway.

Sitting in front row meant that as the stage rose and sunk and moved around you did tend to miss out on the action, but you also got the sense at times you were part of the action. It was quite a spectacle and something that really used all the tricks of the Olivier Theatre. Even more of a spectacle were some of the actors and puppeteers, (although that has less to do with the overall appeal of the show and more about my personal taste)...

It was an amazing production and deserves a TV series or movie like the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings franchises, although religion gets a bit of a battering in these stories (depending on how you interpret it of course, but that didn't stop Jerry Springer The Opera having to cancel its National Tour) so that might not go down well with the usual suspects.

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