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 […]

1. Theatre review: Henry IV Part I – Royal Shakespeare Company on tour

    

   Funny how knowledge of Shakespeare is shaped by which play you study at school.  For me, this was The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet (thank goodness). Later came the discovery of King Lear, Othello, Macbeth; and now as editor of Ink Pellet, I have been fortunate enough to see many more (Much Ado, The Tempest […]

2. Theatre review: One Man Two Guvnors

    

   Anne Evelyn finally got around to seeing One Man Two Guvnors and found the praise due indeed...

3. Theatre: Doctor Faustus

    

   LESLEY FINLAY enjoyed this macabre retelling of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus...

4. [Exit Marlowe from the shadows]

    

   Steven Green is the Artistic Director of Fourth Monkey, the theatre company that is reviving three Christopher Marlowe plays for modern audiences. Here, he explains why the ‘forgotten playwright’ deserves a wider audience...