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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: Danelaw @ORLTheatre


Written fifteen years ago as an absurdist comedy, a portrayal of an attempt by a far-right group to set up a white-supremacist state in East Anglia could today be seen more like a documentary of today’s troubling times. But there is nothing like a funny and timely reminder of the deadly threat that far-right groups still pose to this country. 

Partially inspired by the neo-Nazi group Combat 18’s attempts to set up such a homeland in the 1990s, it follows an MI6 agent’s attempt to infiltrate the group. 

But a funny thing happens on the way to set up a white-supremacist enclave as a gruesome murder is committed on some waste ground in Harlow.


Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day either. But Peter Hamilton’s play, Danelaw is currently playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 5 October. See it and laugh nervously... 

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Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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