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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...

Something just broke

The timeline to an unfolding day of anxiety
0851 Seven people die in a blast on a train 100 yards from Liverpool Street station
0856 21 people die in a blast on a train between Russell Square and King's Cross stations
0917 Seven people die in blast on a train at Edgware Road station
0947 Two people die in a blast on a number 30 bus at Tavistock Place
It happened within an hour but for the rest of the day the news trickled in... And suddenly suspect packages were everywhere...
0955 First newsflash email that a loud bang near Liverpool Street station may be due to power surge
1031 Email newsflash confirming multiple explosions' in London
1150 First confirmed deaths
1217 PM Flies to London
1533 33 Deaths confirmed

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