this month's
Ink Pellet contains
A Final Haunt
After 33 extraordinary years, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black will haunt the stage of the Fortune Theatre for the final time, as the production ends in the West End on Saturday 4th March 2023. PW Productions announce that after 33 extraordinary years in London’s West End, the theatrical sensation that is Susan Hill’s THE […]
Reaching for the Moon
Susan Elkin paid a visit to Half Moon theatre in London’s East End to chat with CEO Chris Elwell about their extensive education outreach and innovative theatre programmes. Half Moon Theatre sits in the heart of Limehouse in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, spitting distance from the DLR and mainline station. Formerly a pretty […]
National Youth Theatre Rep Company
The National Youth Theatre’s Rep Company is celebrating its first ten years and Susan Elkin paid a visit to learn more. Each year a group of fifteen or so talented NYT members, aged 18 to 25, are selected by audition to join this company. In just a few months they rehearse three shows, many of […]
Apprenticeships
An important and often overlooked route into the industry, especially for many non-performing roles. Susan Elkin has some suggestions. Theatre is like an iceberg. For every role on stage there are probably at least half a dozen technicians you can’t see. And the industry has been telling us for decades that there are skills shortages […]
School Shows
Never underestimate the power of a school production – for every single person involved. When you meet former students, sometimes from decades back in my case, it’s usually taking part in Oliver! or A Midsummer Night’s Dream that they reminisce about with shining eyes. Most importantly it’s a terrific bonding exercise. We hear a lot […]
New Perspectives
With three separate Lucian Freud exhibitions currently on, Graham Hooper took time to visit and here is his review of these contrasting shows. LLucian Freud would have been 100 this year, and that’s a good excuse to look back over his life and work, but especially his work, as the two have a rather nasty […]
Grandad Anansi – Half Moon Theatre
Predicated partly on Black History Month, Elayne Ogbeta’s muliti-layered play presents Grandad (Marcus Hercules) and his primary school age granddaughter, Abi (Jazmine Wilkinson) in his garden. Like everything else in this show, the garden designed by Sorcha Corcoran, is beautiful with lots of colour, light and plants that Grandad knows by name and talks to. […]
Theatre Review – The King of Nothing – Little Angel Theatre
Ben Glasstone’s charming, witty account of The Emperor Who Has No Clothes works well for two main reasons. First it is one of the most perceptive stories ever written, dealing as it does with vanity, self delusion, conformity and truth. It’s both topical and timeless. Second, we have a cost of living crisis and the […]
Book Review – Activist
by Louisa Reid Published by Guppy Books Cassandra, narrator of this powerful verse novel, is a reluctant sixth former in a prestigious mixed school, formerly all boys, where toxic culture simmers. Driven by her own experience, and by nature a feisty “shouter” she campaigns forcibly for acknowledgement that some of the boys at school treat […]
Book Review – A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers: Reorienting Classroom Literacy Practice
by Maya Pindyck and Ruth Vinz, with Diana Liu and Ashlynn Wittchow The thrust of this detailed, well-researched, quite academic book about the poetry in classrooms is that we shouldn’t teach students to search for meaning so that “the poem becomes a specimen for examination under the microscope of interpretative practices”. Instead we should experience […]
Theatre Reviews
Our theatre reviews aim to bring you the latest and best performances of plays, dance and music. Ink Pellet celebrates the country’s vibrant regional theatres – from performances of the classics and set texts, to new plays that will inspire and support you.
Once again, we have a merry band of discerning teachers who visit plays in their town (sometimes earning themselves a free programme and interval drink)to review for the magazine.
We’ll also review something you might like – just for sheer pleasure! If you would like to join our panel of reviewers, please join in or email the editor john@inkpellet.co.uk.
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We’re used to the Christopher Sergel adaptation, approved by novelist Harper Lee, which uses child actors and stresses the piece’s literary origins. Aaron Sorkin does something different. He turns the story upside down so that we start at the trial of Tom Robinson for rape, uses it as the glue that the piece keeps coming […]
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Floella Benjamin’s memoir about arriving in England from Trinidad is effectively Small Island from a child’s point of view. David Wood has turned the book into a pacey stage piece by flipping the story on its head and adding some good songs. Benjamin’s story is linear but Wood begins with her being honoured in adult […]
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There’s much to enjoy in ENO’s new production of Cosi fan tutte with Phelim McDermott in the director’s seat and Kerem Hasan in charge in the pit. The singing is faultless with especially strong performances from Benson Wilson as a fruity Guglielmo and Nardus Williams as a wistful but powerful Fiordiligi especially in her “Far […]
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This pared down Hamlet (65 mins – who needs Horatio or Gravediggers?) for young audiences has some of the clearest story telling I’ve ever seen. Sticking closely to Shakespeare’s play and using a fair bit of his language, Jude Christian’s version ensures that every child in the audience is fully involved but none is patronised: […]
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The political message in this 45 minute show for under 7s is laid on thickly. Beware of crude indoctrination masquerading as educative entertainment. Yes of course we need to save endangered animals and to conserve the jungle but absurd, outdated stereotyping of the sort of people who once killed animals for taxidermy is hardly likely […]
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This is a Hamlet designed to court the young so it’s shallowly populist in places. It is punctuated, for example with inappropriate Smiths songs although I liked the occasional “profane” interjection into the text. The use-your-own accent policy grated at the beginning, but once I got used to George Fouracres as Hamlet speaking in a […]
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Effectively a 35 minute opera for preschoolers, Handa’s Surprise is adapted from Eileen Browne’s much loved 1995 book. Akeyo (Rujenne Green) wants to take a gift of fruit to her friend Handa (Hannah Akhalu), but all the fruit she gathers is eaten by animals she meets on the way, so it’s fortunate that a goat […]
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Witchery, regicide, paranoia, somnambulism and, ultimate good-guy coup – yes, it’s the Scottish play. And because this production is part of the Globe’s long standing Playing Shakespeare With Deutsche Bank project which provides free tickets for state school groups from London and Birmingham, it is neatly pared down to 90 minutes. Sarah Frankcom’s direction ensures […]
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Toby Olié’s puppetry (see our interview on page 26) are what this show will be remembered for. If life sized puppets are to live, they must never be still. Designed and directed by Olié these jointed creations are magnificently controlled by a team of fourteen skilled puppeteers, they move continuously in a convincingly equine, canine, […]
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It’s often forgotten that the British Library is a repository of manuscripts not just books and this enlightening exhibition (postponed from 2020 which was the 250th anniversary of his birth) shows what a surprisingly wide range of Beethoven texts are held there. The famous 9th symphony, for example, was commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of […]