Susan Elkin

Hereford

Freelance Reporter at Freelance

Editorial Contributor at Ink Pellet

Journalist. Author. Amateur violinist. Former teacher. "The Alzheimer's Diaries" 2022. "All Booked Up" March 2024. "This Writing Business" June 2025.

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Articles

RPO and Johan Dalene 29 May 2025 - Susan Elkin reviews.

1 week 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.
THE FROGS at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 28 June 2025

1 week 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.
Susan's Bookshelves: A Parcel of Patterns by Jill Paton Walsh

1 week 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.
SHUCKED at Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park until 14 June 2025

1 week 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.
LITTLE BROTHER at Jermyn Street Theatre until 21 June 2025

2 weeks 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”.
Susan's Bookshelves: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

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

I read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and was moved by it, soon after it was published in January 2013. It is, indeed an unlikely premise for a novel as a sad, rather lonely, 60 something man impulsively decides to walk from his home in Cornwall to visit Queenie a former work colleague in Berwick-on-Tweed because she has written to say she is dying.
Maidstone Symphony Orchestra 17 May 2025 (Susan Elkin reviews)

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

Maidstone Symphony OrchestraMaxim CalverBrian WrightMote Hall, Maidstone17 May 2025Elgar’s last major work, the 1919 cello concerto, is one of those gut-wrenchingly beautiful pieces which simply can’t be heard too often. And Maxim Calver, in his fourth appearance with MSO, dug out plenty of the soulful anguish and autumnal sadness which the piece demands while also infusing it with rich tonal warmth.
The Children (Susan Elkin reviews)

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

The Children Lucy KirkwoodTower Theatre, Stoke NewingtonStar rating: 3.5Lucy Kirkwood’s 90 minute play, which premiered at The Royal Court in 2016 is an interesting and perspicacious piece. And like all the best drama it functions at more than one level. On the surface it’s about living with, and in the aftermath of nuclear power station accident known as “the disaster”. More generally it forces us to confront the responsibilities older people have to future generations.
Alright, Alright, Alright at Bridge House Theatre

3 weeks ago | londonpubtheatres.com | Susan Elkin

‘lurches into the surreal, and quite literally loses the plot’ ★ ½ For something that is billed as a comedy there are very few laughs in this play. I saw it on opening night – where I was 8% of the sparse audience – and most of us were stony faced throughout. Leonard (Kieran Slade) is a nervous, geeky film buff who’d quite like promotion at work. In this he is encouraged by his friend/work colleague, Jasmine (Isabella Inchbald).
Susan's Bookshelves: normal rules don't apply by Kate Atkinson

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

I’ve never quite got into Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series but I’ve happily lapped up several of her standalones and so was pleased to find this volume of short stories, published in 2024. Yes, the uncapitalised title says it all. They don’t. These stories plunge us into a world of talking horses, fairytale princesses, hapless women trying to pick a way through the 21st century, a character called Franklin who keeps popping up at different points in his doomed (maybe) life.