Thinking AloudEnglish Blog

If you, like me, have felt a little bombarded by the hype around the Bayeux Tapestry - I mean, it has been sitting in a museum in Normandy for rather a long time - you may have wondered why I was going to see an entire show about it last night. It was a tantalising pitch: a retelling of the story inside the actual ruins of Hastings Castle. Live music, projections, actors you recognise from the screen and (rather wonderfully) you were invited to bring your own chair. I have

I remember when drama wasn’t something squeezed into an end-of-term production slot or a “practical enrichment” box on the timetable. It was part of English, right there in the Key Stage 3 curriculum, alongside metaphors, Macbeth, and the Year 8 class jumping off the ends of their desks as Icarus tested his wings. (Apologies to the Head whose office was below my classroom.)

The Faction’s The Talented Mr Ripley is currently in Brighton and touring across the UK in the coming weeks. It’s definitely worth an evening of your time - slick, unsettling, and fiendishly clever theatre that lingers long after the lights go up. I’ll be keeping an eye on whatever this company does next.

There’s a particular magic that happens when you sit down in a theatre real, velveteen-seated, actual air-in-the-room theatre - and the lights go down.