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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...

Love and war: Creditors @JSTheatre


Walking into Jermyn Street Theatre to see the new translation of Strindberg's Creditors feels like you're transported to a small seaside hotel in the late 1800s. The sounds, look and feel, takes you there on some unknown Nordic island where the action takes place.

And it's gorgeousness lulls you into a false sense of security for the mind games that are about to take place over the next ninety minutes.

It opens with Adolf (James Sheldon), talking desperately about the love for his new wife with a man he recently has befriended, Gustaf (David Sturzaker). She's just published a book about her idiotic husband from her first marriage and now gone away for a few days. And her absence is driving Adolf crazy. He's stopped painting and started working on a very sexually provocative sculpture.

But his new friend is sowing the seeds of doubt about his wife. He saw her on the ferry chatting to some young men. And as Adolf becomes increasingly neurotic about his new wife's potential infidelities, they both hatch a plan to confront her upon her return. But one at a time.

So when the unconventional Tekla (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) she finally arrives the scene is set for a double showdown, both with the neurotic Adolf and then Gustaf. But the confrontation is not what is expected. There are debts to be paid and consequences for all.

The cast is excellent at navigating both the humour and tragedy of the piece. This new translation from Howard Brenton moves quickly from comedy to savagery, but it never skips a beat. It's a seductive piece that will have you laughing one moment and recoiling in another.

Directed by Tom Littler (with designs by Louie Whitemore and lighting by Johanna Town), Creditors is running in repertory with Miss Julie (also a new translation by Howard Brenton) at Jermyn Street Theatre until 1 June.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️



Photos by Robert Day

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