MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
A comic-strip version of history
A production full of empty symbols and bereft of the 'epic' structure that might do it justice doesn't impress ANGUS REID
OFF THE MARK Laura Evelyn and Bettrys Jones (as Ellen Wilkinson)
[Pamela Raith] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Red Ellen
Royal Lyceum Theatre
Edinburgh
YOU can only be grateful to learn about Ellen Wilkinson, the pioneering socialist MP who lead the Jarrow March in 1936 and, as minister of education under Attlee, introduced many school reforms in a short period, such as free milk and lunches, and raising the leaving age from 14 to 15.
But when you weigh her political life against the character on show in this Edinburgh/Nottingham/Northern Stage co-production, you are left pondering the choices made by writer Caroline Bird, and director Wils Wilson.
That Wilkinson was in fact a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921, and a successful novelist with two works of fiction on the shelf alongside her seven works of political history and theory, and a long-standing suffragist, feminist and organiser comes as a surprise.
More from this author
ANGUS REID applauds the ambitious occupation of a vast abandoned paper factory by artists mindful of the departed workforce
ANGUS REID calls for artists and curators to play their part with political and historical responsibility
ANGUS REID recommends a landmark work of aural history that follows the intertwined lives of four International Brigaders
ANGUS REID reviews a book that is an important and comprehensive work of documentation
