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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...

Opera: Salome

Full frontal nudity, blood and violence never sounded and looked so good as it did in the Royal Opera's production of Salome which I caught last week. Richard Strauss based his one-act opera on Oscar Wilde's play, and gave his leading lady the enormous task of singing Wagnerian-like over a large orchestra, belting all the way. Angela Denoke in the title role could meet that task, although I was a little bewildered why she went from a delightful dinner party down to the cellar to speak to Jokanaan in the first place. Later, as Salome was dancing the dance of the seven veils, running from the dining room to the wash room, it felt more like dance of the seven rooms...

Actually there were so many eccentricities in this production ranging from a cellar / basement that looked like a hospital, it was best not to think about these things too much... I did assume the executioner was naked due to the practicalities of having to wash all that blood off one's clothes. A nice little Friday evening distraction. The opera was okay too...

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