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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...

You can’t stop the boats: Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea @ParkTheatre


Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea by Italian playwright Emanuele Aldrovandi and translated by Marco Young, has made a topical return to London at the Park Theatre after playing earlier this summer at the Seven Dials Playhouse. In a week when leaders and leaders in waiting were talking about illegal immigration, it seemed like a topical choice. It also has one hell of an evocative title.

The piece opens with Adriano Celantano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol, which sets the scene for what we are about to see. After all, a song about communication barriers seems perfect for a play about people trafficking and illegal immigration. One side doesn’t understand why they happen, and the other still comes regardless of the latest government announcement / slogan. 


However, the twist here is that the crossing is undertaken the other way. People are fleeing Europe instead of escaping war or poverty in Africa or the Middle East. It’s set sometime in the not-too-distant future. There is a crisis causing people to flee the reverse way. Europe is no longer inhabitable except for the extremely rich. And so we’re introduced to four characters. They have no names, only descriptions. Three characters pay the fourth to travel in a shipping container to an unknown destination. But as things go wrong, things take a darker and abstract tone.

The ensemble balances the darkness of the subject matter and the banality arising from seemingly lighter-hearted moments. As The Burly One (and smuggler), Felix Garcia Guyer addresses the audience with facts about shipping containers and Italian recipes. The staging is kept simple with a red curtain evoking the red container ship they are within. 

The overall impact is less realistic than Tess Berry Hart’s excellent CARGO at the Arcola in 2016. This piece explored similar themes about illegal immigration from a container ship. However, I suspect the point is more about getting the audience to try to understand the informal immigration trade. It isn’t a journey you can take with a wad of cash, a waterproof suitcase and a few folded shirts and expect to survive even if one of the characters tries to do that. 

There may not be a solution by the end (or a straightforward conclusion), but who can honestly believe anyone has one? Directed by Daniel Emery, Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea is at Park Theatre until 30 September. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Production photos by Charles Flint

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