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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...

Oughta be in pictures: The Biograph Girl @Finborough

Musicals are usually about a love story. In The Biograph Girl, the love story is about the love of going to the flickers and the people who made them. The flickers were what people called the short silent movies. Before they started treating the medium as a form of art. And a source of serious money making. The show is having its first professional production in nearly forty years at the Finborough Theatre.

While there’s much love for the subject, a musical covering the early years of film is a tad ambitious. Covering the stories of Lilian Gish, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith doesn’t allow much time to explore them in any detail. Or any of the peripheral characters that surround them. People come and go. Only by reading the programme notes do you get a sense of who they were. And while the musical numbers are fun, they also tend to slow down rather than advance their stories. 

It’s a minimalist production too with its plain white walls, a few chairs and an electric piano. It’s a pity the production didn’t attempt to evoke techniques of filming that the work describes. You’re left to your own imagination to know what an iris shot is. Some old black and white films projected on the bare walls might have given a greater sense of the time and place.

But the performances in the piece are a delight and the cast injects the piece with endless energy. Particularly during the dance sequences choreographed by Holly Hughes. Sophie Linder-Lee as Mary Pickford is terrific as the movie star and canny businesswoman. She steals the show with her tap dancing and steely determination. And Matthew Cavendish is a one-man slapstick powerhouse with his depiction of funny man Mack Sennet. 

As part of the series of rediscovering British Musicals it is a fascinating piece for musical theatre aficionados. But others may be less intrigued. Directed by Jenny Eastop with musical direction by Harry Haden-Brown, The Biograph Girl runs through to June 9.

⭐️⭐️⭐️


Photos by Lidia Crisafulli

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