Ellie Jones is a freelance theatre director who specialises in making extraordinary things happen in the most unlikely circumstances. Invariably involving extreme logistics and casts of millions, Ellie often works with children, animals and all the other things most sensible people avoid like the plague.
She is quite fantastic and extremely sort after and was worked on a myriad of exciting projects – please explore this site to read reviews and view images of past work.
Ellie is always looking for new and exciting projects contact her if you have something splendid lurking in your imagination.
Dickens festive classic promenade style.
Written by: Charles Dickens
Adapted by: Neil Bartlett
Director: Ellie Jones
Dec – Jan 2010 Southwark Playhouse
“Ellie Jones’s production oozes atmosphere and offers flashes of inspiration.
Jones exploits the venue’s dank, murky Victorian vaults to create a sense of an unearthly subterranea and of the unyielding desolation of a London coldly merciless to the vulnerable. The arches are mildewed, cobwebbed and dripping with chilly moisture. As the audience moves from one space to the next, these cheerless environs are adroitly transformed. Scrooge’s spartan office, a ribbon-strewn barn where the Fezziwigs’ Christmas shindig takes place, a sinister graveyard, the dining room of the Cratchits, which unexpectedly, with the opening of trompe l’oeil windows, turns into a giant advent calendar: thanks to Barbara Fuchs’s designs, at its best it’s like walking through the pages of a lavish picture book….. there are some glowingly memorable moments along the way.”
Sam Marlowe – The Times
“The cast is small, so apart from Scrooge, everyone has two or three parts to play as well as adapted carols to sing, and the effects are simply done with hand-drawn backdrops and bare light bulbs….. this definitely isn’t a show for those who shy away from audience participation, there’s dancing to join in with, seats at Mrs Cratchit’s Christmas table to be taken and the cast mingle with the crowd…. It’s a charming, festive evening.”
Rebecca Seal – The Observer (5 of the best family Christmas shows)
“….there’s much to savour, as the 28 strong ensemble, eight principal actors and 20 spirited members of the local community lead us through a series of dankly atmospheric vaults, as we accompany Scrooge (David Fielder, who moves niftily from hunched to hopping) on his journey to redemption. Jones cleverly integrates her audience into the scenes, which means that we become frightened clerks cowering over desks in Scrooge’s office, or extra guests at the Cratchit’s Christmas table.”
Fiona Mountford – Evening Standard
“There are some lovely touches: a magical bed, rolling back from the theatre proper into a cavernous Christmas past, a hugely affecting Tiny Tim, and a roseate fairy of a ghost with a lightbulb wand.”
Lucy Powell – Time Out
“Scenes that linger in the memory are Thomas Padden’s cursed, chain-clad Marley and the dimly lit graveyard where Scrooge encounters his own tombstone. This is a commendable adaptation by a playful company that wants to have fun with its audience.”
Dominic Martin – The Stage
**** “Ellie Jones has pulled off something wonderful here… a brilliant balance of wit and coercion. An unnerving but thrilling evening.” - Dominic Maxwell, The Times
**** “A superbly realised production from director Ellie Jones… crackles with Pinter’s pitch-black wit and horrified fascination with emotional and political power.” Critic’s choice – Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out
**** “Now this is what I call site-specific…Pinter, the master of menace, would surely have revelled in this.” – Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard
**** “An artistic triumph” – Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
***** “The sense of being trapped within a brutal state machine builds and intensifies during this brilliant site-specific production by Hydrocracker” - Jane Hughes, The Independent
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I am thrilled to be directing another staging of Hydrocracker‘s The New World Order in Shoreditch Town Hall.
Staged in a former government building, Hydrocracker’s darkly compelling promenade performance journeys from the council chambers of high-minded policymakers to the labyrinthine depths below, where functionaries of the new world order keep ‘the world clean for democracy’.
16 Nov 2011 – 11 December 2011 / 19:00, 21:15
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I always love to hear from people with interesting ideas for things to do. Please contact me !
