AS Theatre Studies Presentations

Date: Wednesday 24 March 2010

After the blockbuster pantomime 'Beauty and the Beast', the Theatre Studies' department has this term been focusing on the public performances vital to examination success. As you may have read from Liz Sears' review last week, the GCSE candidates did immensely well seven days ago, as did their Lower Sixth AS counterparts last evening.

Using the Old Gym as their theatre, and in front of a select audience of just fifty, two casts wowed the external moderator with settings of two fairy tales from the oeuvre of the Brothers Grimm. Taking the modern day settings of Carol-Ann Duffy, and in the style of the Knee High Theatre Company, the candidates produced two stunning, and mark-winning performances.

In the first piece, Henry Withrington, Rafi Stone, Alex Denton, Tilly Glinn and Freya Hill had fun with the convoluted story of a magic table, a gold-bearing donkey, a sack with a cudgel, and a wicked innkeeper who gets his just come-uppance. The moderator was well impressed, awarding high top grades to all five actors.

Then followed a quinquumvirate of James Pegg, Alice Obee, Bethany Kinch, Hannele Lewis-Anthony, and Laurie Howard, who reworked the Cinderella story as, I think this is the correct title, 'Ash Petal', the young girl sorely abused by her wicked stepsisters. This was far more brutal than the children's pantomime: toes cut off. heels severed as stepsisters tried to squeeze into the slipper; and, eyes pecked out by vengeful white doves, as Ash Petal drives off with the prince, leaving stepsisters to a gory fate.

This also gained high marks, and tears of joy from one of the actors who 'had never got a B in an exam before'! Tonight, the third and final presentation - the Upper Sixth take to the stage for their A2 pieces.