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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...
Speaking of rubbish service, A and I go to Balans cafe in Soho regularly. I am not sure why as the food is more likely to be awful, the people often in there are freaks (usually exes of A's who are now hustlers) and the service is mixed. The one thing going for it is the location and it is a great space. I think that's why we keep coming back.

Wednesday evening was a case in point. Early January they gave me a voucher which was a "buy one meal get one free" deal. The deal came with a whole series of catches however. You could only redeem the offer Mon-Wed between 5-11pm and the moon had to be in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. The fine print was so amusing that I asked the waiter what we could get with this deal. Eventually after much haggling he told us that A's all day breakfast and my burger would cover the deal so we made the order.

A few minutes later the waiter came back to apologise and say that breakfasts were not part of the meal deal and that if we could use the voucher another time that would mean that he wouldn't have to pay for the breakfast. I was amazed that not only were the planets not in our favour for the deal, but the management were so cheap and such slave drivers that they wouldn't cover a £5 breakfast but make their wait staff pay for it. Rather than make the waiter work a full hour to pay for our meal we decided that we would have the common decency to try and use the voucher another time. As for the meal? It was edible this time...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
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