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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Transferred from Royal and Derngate Northampton, which produced it last year, to the Vaudeville for a short West End summer run The Worst Witch is humane, funny and beautifully staged.
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The difficulty with adapting Conan Doyle is the complexity of the plots. It can so easily get wordy and this version, adapted by Nick Lane who also directs, suffers (a bit) from too much exposition and not enough action in the first half. It improves after the interval, though. Lane does, however, retell Conan Doyle’s […]
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Written in 1693, this is a play which hasn’t improved with time. Like all Restoration Comedies it’s a complicated, convoluted plot which involves an awful lot of lusting after the “wrong” people. It takes until the interval to work out who everybody is and it’s daft to double cast Zoe Waites whose two characters are, […]
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The National Youth Theatre Rep Company is a vocational training group of 15 or 16 actors aged 18-25 who present a West End season at the end of their quasi-course. It’s the top tier of NYT’s work. Most participants go straight on to professional work. Abridged to 90 interval-less minutes by Moira Buffini and pithily […]
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Do not miss this gem of a production! Calendar Girls The Musical is on tour around the UK (currently dates through to August 2019) and will make you laugh and cry in equal measure. The production, based on the true story, the film and the award-winning play by Tim Firth, features musical numbers written by […]
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The Nutcracker and I is a very engaging piano recital with attached ballet, both actual and projected. I caught it at King’s Place in London before it embarked on a worldwide autumn/early 2019 tour There are some further UK dates in December. It’s an enticingly imaginative concept and a real joy to see/hear some […]
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This year’s NYT rep season opened with a timely revival of Evan Placey’s fine, topical 2015 play which asks many more questions about the complexity of sexual consent than it answers. The first half takes us to a school where married, mother of one, pregnant teacher Diane (Marilyn Nnadebe) is trying to “deliver” sexual relationships […]
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By Geraldine McCaughrean Published by Usborne We’re in the eighteenth century and the Hebrides, tucked away in one of Britain’s remotest corners. The village community more or less subsists on seabirds and their by-products. Quill and a group of boys are – almost as a right of passage – left on a rock with three […]
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Alan Bennett is probably the country’s most reliable theatre filler and his new play is funny, affectionate, sharp and (mildly) taboo-breaking as you’d expect from our 84-year-old nat… Well, I won’t say it because he hates the soubriquet, but you know what I mean. We’re in a Yorkshire general hospital destined for probable closure. Patients […]
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Based on Patrick Ness’ novel, which won the 2012 Carnegie medal along with the Kate Greenaway medal for Jim Kay‘s illustrations, A Monster Calls is both theatrically stunning and emotionally hard-hitting. Children shouldn’t have to see their parents die and older people shouldn’t have to witness their adult children pre-deceasing them but, tragically, it happens. […]