Susan Elkin

4 weeks ago | susanelkin.co.uk | Susan Elkin

Royal Philharmonic OrchestraConductor Antonello ManacordaViolinist Johan DaleneCadogan Hall  29 May 2025A  pleasing concert, which spanned 120 years and three very different countries,  it packed  plenty of drama. Mozart´s overture to The Magic Flute is insouciantly theatrical and I admired the contrasts Manacorda ensured we got between the delicate semiquaver passages and the big grandiloquent statements. He is an impassioned conductor although there´s plenty of restraint there too.

1 month ago | londonpubtheatres.com | Susan Elkin

‘Clever fun but too long’ ★★★ ½ Dating, in various forms, from the 405 BC and 1970s this pretty bonkers show tells the story of Dionysus (Dan Buckley – good) and his slave Xanthias (Kevin McHale – fine work) visiting Hades to rescue George Bernard Shaw so that he can save civilisation. As it turns out they meet Shakespeare while they’re there and set up a TV style reality competition. Of course he wins so they take him back to life and leave Shaw behind.

1 month ago | susanelkin.co.uk | Susan Elkin

Jill Paton Walsh (1937-2020) was very good at historical fiction for young readers and we used to promote, teach and use her work a lot in the schools I taught in. I remember pouncing on A Parcel of Patterns with glee when it was published in 1983. It is set in Eyam in 1665. That’s the Derbyshire village which famously locked down when it was unaccountably afflicted with plague as an altruistic way of preventing its spread.

1 month ago | londonpubtheatres.com | Susan Elkin

‘It’s fun and you’ll laugh and probably enjoy the skilful timing’ ★★★ ½ Who knew that corn could so versatile, both visually and practically? The opening number in this upbeat show, in which nothing is to be taken seriously, lays down the (often phallic, of course) parameters with slick clarity. We’re in Cob County which is somewhere in the remote deep South. The inhabitants enjoy their insularity and the economy rests entirely on, well, corn.

1 month ago | londonpubtheatres.com | Susan Elkin

‘Unusual, timely and important migration story’ ★★★★This is an unusual play. And “timely” is an understatement. It is the personal story of a man who travels from his home in Guinea and eventually, after many trials, arrives in Spain where he meets and became friends with Basque writer, Amets Arzallus Antia. Together they write his story, now adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker. It’s an intensely powerful, deeply moving narrative which puts a much needed human face on the migration “issue”.