“Miss Smith, love – you’re doing fine. You’re just trying to win an argument with a group of goats and you only have one carrot.”
It speaks a lot to the dramatic abilities of our Year 7 and 8 cohort when minimal staging, props and an expectation to be onstage throughout, yields the quality of acting we witnessed last night. Throw in the comic genre with more than its fair share of dry wit, sarcasm and irony and it makes for a very subjective reception. Will everyone laugh at the right points? Will it land as we had intended it to?
You bet…and it was done with aplomb.
True to form, our Performing Arts dream team that is Mrs Bennion and Mrs Venables concocted yet another storming success with ‘Freedom for 9AI’. With a witty script reminiscent of the popular Willie Russell classic “Our Day Out” – a GCSE text from days gone by – the story followed a group of underprivileged school children, away from their known environs for the day, on an exciting and meticulously-planned school trip. Similar characters of Russell’s Kay and Briggs – brilliantly portrayed by Molly and Jack as Mrs Ingram and Mr Jones – were placed in loco parentis for the day. Whose teaching style would have maximum impact: the placid and appeased Mrs Ingram or the unyielding dictatorship that Mr Jones embodied? For many, the humour rose sharply when Paris, our obsessive and unrelenting bus driver insisted on ‘no chewing-no talking-no breathing’ student travel. Oh, how we laughed at that glint in Paris’ eye…and the hands firmly at the ten and two o’clock position.
Dare we reflect on the ‘very UN-TN’ hair styles and definite presence of haphazardly applied makeup? And what about the caterpillar brows and oversized hoop earrings the girls flocked to adorn themselves with? Mrs Westall herself articulated our very thoughts as the audience: “Who ARE you?” We definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore with these modifications – and what a sensational dimension they added to the method acting.
A fabulous swan song for our Year 8 students, who were so very cohesive in all rehearsal elements with their Year 7 peers. Props to all involved in this process. And another high bar set for upcoming productions ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Mary Poppins’. If you’re anything like me, you can barely contain your enthusiasm.
