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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...
One houseguest or two

My flatmate R has a friend staying over for the week. He is English but lives in Barcelona as a lifestyle choice. He is a great houseguest however as already it has only been a day and he has cleaned out the cupboards and fixed the blockage in the bathroom sink. If only all houseguests could be so useful...

Anyway, he brought with him some chorizo sausage from Spain which he left hanging in the lounge room. Sunday evening he awoke to hear the sounds of something chomp chomping into his sausage - and not in a good way. Our resident rat had found it and somehow managed to eat half the thing.

Last night as the event was described to me as an unwelcome visitor I was wondering whether it was one of R's gentlemen callers that were quite interested in a bit of Spanish sausage. They have been known to come around for a bite at 3am and again at 5am. But when it was clarified it was a caller of the ratty kind it all made sense. I had thought it had been a case of all quiet on the rodent front for some time but there is nothing like an old building and a bit of sausage to tempt the critters out.

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