School Play: Review

On Friday evening, 20^th March, I had the pleasure of watching this year’s School Play, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Where do I start? The production was FA-BU-LOUS, to purloin the catchphrase of a well-known TV judge. The complexities and difficulties for a 21^st-century audience of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan English were conveyed skilfully through not just the words, but movement, gesture and expression as well by a cast of students who, without exception, were superb. 

A Midsummer’s Night Dream offers the not inconsiderable challenge of having a dozen or so significant roles rather than just two or three lead parts. Duke Theseus and his bride-to-be Hippolyta with the Court set the bar high right from curtain-up. The two pairs of lovers and suitors handled the comedic moments splendidly while conveying all the emotional intensity and complications involved in falling in, out and back into love again depending on which character had been spell-bound by the mischievous Puck. He, alongside his master, the imperious ruler of the Fairy Kingdom, Oberon, and his consort, proud Titania, not to forget her four attendant fairies, brought to life the magical and ethereal charms of the ‘other world’ as they deployed their powers to influence the course of events in the world of the mortals. The six Mechanicals, with Bottom strutting his stuff as the Kenneth Branagh of the group, played the tradesmen-turned-amdrammers to perfection, delivering their comedy rehearsal scenes with aplomb, culminating in their hilarious rendition of the Pyramus & Thisbe playlet in the final act. All these protagonists were excellent, making it hard to believe this was a group of talented teenagers performing the second night of their Shakespeare play while studying for exams, not a troupe of seasoned professionals who had been touring with it for months. One advantage for a school production over most professional companies is the numbers available, which meant the Athenian Court really felt like a court with more than just the habitual token Lord and Lady besides Egeus and Philostrate, whilst the Fairy Kingdom was animated by fairies and sprites galore, sparkling and sprinkling their magic through the enchanted forest. 

This School Play was, however, more than just about the quality of the acting. Many other talents were in evidence. Setting the play in post-WWII England provided the opportunity to showcase the School Swing Band and some beautiful solo singing (aside: I initially thought the accomplished female vocalist was a recording until it was pointed out to me during the interval that, from where  I was sitting, I could not see her performing from up on the balcony to my right) and instrument-playing to provide the leitmotif of a Big Band/Glenn Miller Sound throughout the evening. So, that’s the acting and music. Then, there was the exquisitely choreographed dancing of the fairies as they lulled the Fairy Queen to sleep. And, finally, this wonderful world and action were convincingly anchored in time and place thanks to a superb set, with its painted backdrops of an elegant Cotswold-style manor house and garden alternating with a dense, forbidding and mysterious woodland, not to mention the contributions from the lighting, costumes, make-up and props. 

The whole evening was a resounding success, rapturously received by Friday’s full house. None of this would have been possible, of course, without the tireless efforts and imaginative inspiration of the play’s Producer and Director, Mrs Maxine Cook, assisted by Mrs Sue Hall and Mr Phillip Bullas. Congratulations to them and every single one of the 130 or so named in the programme whether they were on stage, in the wings, behind the scenes, front of house or in the back-office. And, finally (to employ another well-known TV catchphrase)… appropriately, considering all the mentions through the play of the Sun, the Moon, the Earth and the Heavens, Prince Henry’s High School’s production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream even managed to overshadow the headline-making event from earlier the same day – a spectacle in Mother Nature’s own theatre, the partial eclipse of the Sun!

Mr Keith Watson
Vice Chairman of Governors