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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: An Inspector Calls

It's January so it is Get Into London Theatre time... Which is a great way to see a play for a bargain that you might have been ambivalent about seeing previously. One such play I was ambivalent about was the revival of An Inspector Calls, directed by Stephen Daldry. Having now seen it, I still remain ambivalent. Sure I understand how important it must have felt when this production first came on the scene in 1992. Thatcherism was a very recent memory and was a critique of her legacy as much. However eighteen years on, times have certainly changed... And the play feels overproduced and overstaged. And (on the night I saw it...) over-acted...

There is nothing subtle about the JB Priestly's text, which is fine from a historical point of view, but this production decides to ram things home in big large letters, and a tiny little house... And if you aren't being deafened by the nightmare sequence score from Vertigo, you find yourself being moistened by the mist from the rain machine... For a drawing room drama, it all seems like overkill... Still it has proved popular and with Get Into London Theatre prices, it's cheap enough to enjoy being ambivalent. The play runs until March and GILT has been extended now until then too...

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