Death on the Throne | Upstairs at the Gatehouse

“Don’t expect too much,” the cast of Death on the Throne warn in their opening number, going on to tell the audience which West End shows their piece is not, and is also not as good as. What you can expect are loo jokes by the dozen, niche political references, and as many U-turns as U-bends as the cast careens through a madcap 90 minutes.

The basis of the plot is a bedtime story which Daddy (played by co-writer Mark Underwood) tells to his daughter Louise (Sarah Louise Hughes). The story features four characters, all of whom have died “on the throne”, arriving at the gates of Heaven to find that there is only room for three of them and they must now compete in a kind of reverse-Cats scenario to be returned to Earth. 

All of the characters are voiced by Underwood and Hughes and brought to life through puppetry and mime by a group of puppeteers from Puppentheater Halle, Louise Nowitzski, Lars Frank, Simon Buchegger and Hannah Elischer. This combination works well, and also allows for the small company to portray a whole bizarre range of side-characters, from Erich Honecker (don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar, there’s an entire song explaining who he is, although not why he is there) to Elvis (the most famous person to die on the throne).

The show is fast-paced, introducing the four recently departed characters and their backstories, including an influencer, a toilet paper salesman, a draconian mother and a ‘sherbet’-addicted plumber, and giving each of them a moment in the spotlight as they plead to be returned to their lives.

Along the way, romances also develop, and new puppets pop up by the dozen, leading to multiple sub-plots. The strongest of these involves the puppeteers themselves and their right to a voice, for the purposes of which the fourth wall is broken to hilarious effect on a number of occasions. 

Cramming so much into such a short runtime, however, can sometimes make the show feel disjointed and confusing, although given the fever dream nature of the setup this may have been partially intentional.

The songs, written by Underwood and Tobias Künzel (lead singer and songwriter for German band Die Prinzen), are witty and catchy, sampling artists such as The Beatles and of course Elvis, although the sound balance is sometimes a little off, meaning that some of the wittiness of the lyrics is lost. Künzel himself plays drums for the production, alongside Michal Kuhn on keys, Oliver Nelken on guitar and trombone and Gon von Zola on bass guitar.

Angela Baumgart’s set is impressively larger than life within such a small venue, with an abundance of glitter, a giant lavatory seat through which the performers repeatedly bound, and versatile staging which allows the performers and their puppets to appear and disappear at random. 

Witty, irreverent and downright bonkers, Death on the Throne is an entertaining night out as long as you don’t ask too many questions about what is happening and why.

Death on the Throne runs at Upstairs at the Gatehouse until 13th April.

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★★★★☆ (4*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review