Year 8's Drama Production Takes us on a Journey Around the World!

After a year of being locked up in our own personal or family bubbles the Year 8 cast triumphantly burst onto the KES stage in front of real, live, actual audiences in May and took us on a wild journey around the world! Adapting folk stories from various countries, such as India, Japan, Norway, Korea and Japan, the clever script writers (Mrs Bird, Mrs Bruton and Mr Howard) and this talented young cast, delivered poignant social and moral messages in a comic, witty and pithy script with relentless energy for over an hour!

It wasn’t just the stories themselves that took us on a journey. The musical soundtrack to the show was a wildly eclectic mix of musical genres which the Headmaster in his closing speech described as a ‘musical map of his youth’. From the Muppet Theme tune, which provided the backing track for the exuberant, jazz handed opening number, the cast danced, cartwheeled and backflipped through 70s funk, 80s old skool classics, techno, house and oriental percussion, in their brightly coloured T-shirts and Tim Burton-esque black and white stripped socks!

The beautiful festoon lighting and coloured drapes which adorned the stage, set the scene for our Circus Folk. Up first, was the tale of The Glass Knight performed by Jack Gregory, Grace Catton, Beth Ritchie, Will Heaton, Cassie Milton and Albert Marshall. In their grey hoodies and super hero masks the cast created a menacing physical image of the Basilisk which terrorised the local town where parks had been destroyed and street lights didn’t work. They delivered some hard hitting social messages about the dangers of a bored, disenfranchised youth ignored by politicians who claimed ‘ your poverty is not our problem’. Grace taking a stand against the local council, agreeing to ‘clean up the parks, turn on the lights and purify the air’ presented an image of hope for our young people, telling them she could be their future as they danced off stage to ‘the sun is shining’ and lighting the way for our real life politicians who would do well to listen to what she had to say! 

Kai Durant-Valdez, Morven Boyd, Minna Alt-Reuss, Ava Morley, Emily Stenhouse and Theo Grosjean picked up the baton with story number two, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, high kicking their way onto the stage with a 1920s Charleston dance complete with umbrellas and cartwheels! Their tale took us over mountains and streams, along the way teaching us that girls can save the day, we should judge a person on the beauty of their soul not their looks and the power of love can clean dirty clothes- I certainly wish that were true in my house! Kai’s charming polar bear, Morven’s sassy rendition of Hound Dog, Minna’s lisping troll princess, Ava’s feisty heroine and Emily and Theo’s hilarious wisecracking asides created a ‘freaky’ (to quote Emily) feminist tale of empowerment.

This was followed by George Mcdonald channelling Hugh Jackman from The Greatest Showman to open his tale of The Mole’s Wedding! In his glittering shirt he played KES’s answer to Ant & Dec as he hosted a talent show hunt for the perfect husband for his beloved daughter (Imogen Luker) much to the bemusement of his long-suffering wife (Evie Wright). This show certainly revealed a wealth of true talent within the cast: from Kit Magill- Batterbury’s no handed/one legged pogoing down the various levels of the stage to the gasps of the audience; to Imogen’s incredible solo rendition of ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ which brought the house down; to Evie’s grace and poise and balletic prowess as she seamlessly spun pirouette after pirouette to the whoops and cheers of a delighted audience and Abi Whittock’s defiant dance routine to ‘I’m still standing’.

Not to be beaten Danny McKenzie came backflipping onto the stage for the final tale about staying true to yourself and appreciating your own unique gifts! Prince Fire Flash and Prince Fire Fade took us on a journey under the sea with some wonderful visual effects- umbrella jelly fish, neon crabs and my favourite the sea horse- (Ed Davey came on riding a hobby horse, but it was under the sea- geddit? I love a visual pun me!) Polly Waddington, Bonamy Purcell and Iris Rostom were our brave Sirens singing ‘Ain’t no mountain high enough’ into microphones in a manner reminiscent of The Supremes, as Panos Katsimihas, the pink wigged underwater princess charmed Danny the tale’s protagonist. And the moral, as Bon told the crowd, ‘This is a tale of forgiveness. Simply put remember what is truly important in this world’ a poignant message for our times certainly.

For me, I left the theatre thinking how important theatre is to this world, to our school and to our students. To hear the crowd laughing, cheering, clapping and coming together in such a communal (socially distanced of course!) spirit of celebration and to see the journey these young students have undergone in the short space of time they’ve had to rehearse rejuvenated my soul. Well done, to the cast and crew for creating such an uplifting and joyful experience for us all!

Theatre review - Mrs Stevens-Craig

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