Woman in Black

Year 11 have visited London as part of their GCSE course. We watched ‘Woman in Black’ at the Fortune Theatre, Covent Garden. It is a tense, chilling ghost story that is retold from Mr Kipps’ point of view, using only two actors to play all of the parts. It is a clever, well-constructed piece that certainly knows how to build the suspense, and has been scaring audiences for the last 20 years. It made most of the audience jump out of their seats! They had an immensely enjoyable day and were chatting about it for the rest of the week in school. A great day, the sun shone, we ate, shopped, watched fantastic theatre and then went home tired and happy.

The Curve, Leicester

‘Presumption’ by Third Angel was billed as a

“show about love. Not romantic, thrill of passion love, not unconditional, unquestioned love. (but) Everyday what shall we have for dinner, will you be in later, expecting to go on living together - well what else would we do? - love”

And it was. It was funny, thought provoking and a clever blend of monologue, conversation and asides. The whole set was put together during the 75 mins of the play. Whenever the text required a chair or a drink they would spend the next few moments bringing these onto the stage and then repeating the previous section in fast forward mode to get the same point and continue. Confused? Well it had the feel of watching a rehearsal, but was actually cleverly constructed to show how you collect belongings whilst in a long term relationship. Each piece of furniture had a specific space on the stage marked with white tape.

Year 10 students were given an opportunity to watch this piece to see devised work in action; something that they do a lot in their course. They were a credit to the college, well behaved and made very intuitive comments the next day.

Published on Tuesday 5th May 2009 at 09:00