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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...

Previews (and not sequels): King Charles III

After a sellout run at the Almeida earlier this year, Mike Bartlett's new play King Charles III will transfer to the Wyndham’s Theatre for a limited run.

Previews commence from 2 September.

Tim Pigott-Smith will once again play Charles and Oliver Chris will reprise his role as William.

They will be joined by Katie Brayben, Richard Goulding, Nyasha Hatendi, Adam James, Margot Leicester, Miles Richardson, Tom Robertson, Nicholas Rowe, Tafline Steen and Lydia Wilson.

The play explores the people underneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain's most famous family, and what just might happen once The Queen is dead...










Production photos by Johan Persson

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