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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A surreal play, dating from 1974, Habeas Corpus is farce without the clutter. Director Patrick Marber and his team know how to make vintage Bennett sing. The piece makes no attempt at realism. The set consists of a coffin, identities are continually mistaken, characters burst into song and often deliver soliloquies in rhyming couplets. Twice we […]
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Usually listed rather uneasily as a comedy, Measure for Measure is actually a pretty serious play although it descends close to farce in Acts 4 and 5, which is why it’s often dubbed a “problem play”. Blanche McIntyre’s 1970s-set version plays it for laughs. Her cast of eight (there’s some very accomplished doubling) squeeze every […]
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Very clearly reimagined as muscular, vibrant, ensemble-based physical theatre, supported by John Elliott‘s relentless, menacing soundtrack, this riveting take on Animal Farm opens with a mock Pathé News item. It’s immaculately voiced by Will Stewart, who also does a simpering, comfort-loving pragmatic Mollie, and introduces each character. Then we’re into the timeless story about the […]
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Michael Pennington is, as always, a joy to watch and listen to. One of at least three fine one-man shows he has written, toured and revived many times, Anton Chekhov dates from 1984. It’s a glorious monologue in which he depicts the aging Chekhov, reflecting on his life. Of course it’s autobiographical. We learn that […]
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Imagine one of Shakespeare’s crazier comedic romps set in a Greek karaoke bar and you have a good vehicle for a funny play with songs. The show includes Sinatra, Queen, Abba, I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside and more. The incongruity is part of the joke. We start with the deeply distressed Egeon […]
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Artemisia Gentileschi, thought to have died around 1654 in her early sixties, was extraordinary. She was the first woman to be admitted to the artists’ academy in Florence and her work was much admired in her lifetime – only to be largely ignored for three centuries before “rediscovery” in the 20th century. This is one […]
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Dennis Nilsen was a Scottish serial killer in North London who died in 2018. Known as “Des”, he murdered at least 15 young men between 1978 and 1983, although he was convicted of only six. His motivation was necrophilia. This is not a story for the faint-hearted. David Tennant captures the dour, Scots impassivity beautifully. […]
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The surreal and episodic nature of the Alice stories mean they adapt quite well to a single actor format. And adaptor/director Zoe Seaton has come up with some imaginative ideas such as having Tweedledum and Tweedledee played by one actor (Tom Richardson) with a mirror and Dharmesh Patel as the Mad Hatter wearing a puppet theatre head-dress and operating stick puppets within it.
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Imagine a world in which Britain (Albion) has been colonised by Africa seven hundred years ago. By 2020 we have some very angry Noughts, oppressed and poor and some very privileged, but often troubled, black rulers or Crosses...
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Talking Heads – BBC iPlayer Review by Susan ElkinIt was an inspiration to recreate during lockdown the series of twelve monologues which Alan Bennett wrote for TV in 1998. The original series – and the printed text – will be very familiar to many secondary English and Drama teachers as a way of teaching what monologues...