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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...

Me too thirty years ago: Masterpieces @Finborough

Long before the #metoo movement called out sexual harassment (and worse), there was Masterpieces by Sarah Daniels. But instead of wearing pink hats or marching, one of the characters pushes a man under the tube. 

It’s having its first professional London production in 35 years at the Finborough Theatre. It’s an opportunity to see if the arguments of thirty years ago hold insight into the ones of today. In many ways they do. In others they don’t.

The play presents three women living as second class citizens in a first world country. There’s earnest social worker Rowena (Olivia Darnley), her mother (Sophie Doherty) and her friend Yvonne (Tessie Orange Turner). 

Set in the era when sex cinemas were part of the West End fabric, on one level it feels quaint with its approach to pornographic magazines. Studies on the effects of pornography have been inconclusive. But here they’re seen as the source of violence and men’s power over women. The men in the piece are either lecherous or ignorant.

But on the other hand, part of you makes you wonder if this piece was about now, how much would change? For every platitude about narrowing gender pay gaps and breaking the glass ceiling, there’s a story about a gang rape acquittal.

And while the medium may have changed, the messages seem similar. Online porn has usurped the prevalence of Girlie magazines. Unwanted dick pics are the new catcalling. What was once overt is now covert. And potentially more dangerous. 

The structure of the piece with its flashbacks and many characters is jarring at times. But what emerges is a powerful story about women who take different paths to deal with male dominated world.

Verity Quinn’s production design plasters a range of girlie magazines on the wall with a plastic curtain that makes it feel like you’re in an abattoir. In some ways we are.

Directed by Melissa Dunne, Masterpieces is at the Finborough Theatre until 19 May.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Photos by Bill Prentice

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