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Showing posts with the label Kate Fleetwood

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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...
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Under the skin: Bug @found111ldn

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A claustrophobic location and terrific performances makes Bug, Tracy Lett's thriller of conspiracy and loss, a must-see theatrical event. James Norton and Kate Fleetwood act in your laps as two troubled souls stuck in an Oklahoma motel. Found 111 is on the site of the former Central Saint Martins School on Charing Cross Road. It is one of the less glamorous West End theatrical locations, but it has to be one of the most memorable. You walk up a series of stairs surrounded by a lift well (the lift doesn't work by the way so you do have to take the stars), and then find yourself in what looks like part of a cheap motel. There is an unmade bed in the centre and a side board for coffee making facilities. It is an incredible simple yet evocative design by Ben Stones . Desperation fills the air even before the show starts, but that may be because people are in search of the best seat in the house. The audience surrounds all this in what has to be a new trend in voyeur...
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There’s something about Tracy: High Society @oldvictheatre

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An ingenious staging in the round and some rousing numbers (in the second half) may still have you wondering about the point of this revival of High Society at the Old Vic Theatre, a show that was probably best left on film rather than attempting to transfer it to a staged musical. The production is quite marvellous to look at. Things just pop up from the floor - stages, tables with umbrellas, second pianos. There is even some on-stage cooking of breakfast and as someone who loves the smell of eggs and bacon cooking in the morning (although it could have been pancakes - I wasn’t sitting close enough), it was pure bliss. But by casting actors who are not the best singers, the shine seems to be missing in this frothy, superfluous musical, giving it a grittier feel that does not quite sit with it’s farcical and escapist plot.
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