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No.
5
Spring 1932
No.
107
Spring 1949
Autumn
1967
No.
164
Spring/
Summer 1968
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THREE PLAYS: SPRING, 1968
Producing
and acting in any play is an enjoyable and worthwhile activity, but writing a
play for acting seems to us an astonishing feat, particularly when one considers
that the School programme has to continue while dramatic invention is as it were
fermenting and maturing.
During the last three or four years we have seen some very enjoyable comedies written by members of the School. This year's tragedy-"The Tragedy of Lawrence Forbids," was all the more welcome as it represented a sincere effort to get away from mere entertainment and to show a group of people in a complex and tragic situation. The Lear-like theme of neglected old age was too close to us to be comfortable, and it made a sharp impact on the audience. We were made aware yet again of youth's concern in the social problems of our day. It was a very well-acted play, staged interestingly, and with the various scenes played on different parts of the stage at varying levels and with sensitive lighting effects.
The second, shorter play, "The Incident,” again an unusual and thoughtful story was presented as a kind of bridge to the third and longest work of the evening.
In "Little Brother Little Sister" the three characters in a deep shelter after an atomic war, one elderly and half afraid to look forward or back, and a young brother and sister determined to break loose from their constrained shelter life and at whatever cost, to seek a wider existence. A theme of youth's adventurous and anarchistic break-out which has been used many times before, but this time in a strange and rather horrifying context. A difficult play to put over because of its few characters, lack of scene change and because of along soliloquy in the middle, which in part provided the explanation of the characters' circumstances so far only partly understood. As in the "Tragedy of Lawrence Fforbes, the use of different levels helped to produce a variety of interest, and the three principals acted with sensitivity and humour.
It was a programme sharply different from the usual efforts which one associates with school drama. On looking back one finds how grateful one is to those who encourage and nourish an experimental and imaginative approach to plays and play production. One feels that there are people here, not merely standing repeating lines learnt by heart, but actors and producers working as a team with every side of their craft considered in its relation to the whole, a situation in which ideas and healthy self-criticism can flourish.
MESSIAH
Handel's Messiah is a work one can hardly avoid meeting several times in a lifetime; for most of us it holds particular associations that are revived and added to each time we hear it. One of the delights and privileges of working in a school is the being able to present a good many people with the opportunity of hearing such major works for the first time and of enjoying them ourselves as familiar friends. The performances of Messiah given at the end of the Spring Term delighted us all.
One's first impression of the choral groups and orchestra in the chancel of Christ Church left one asking how many members of the School would be left to sit in the body of the church to listen but on Sunday evening the church was full. We came to enjoy the music, and we did; we can go on enjoying it on the record that is both technically and musically a fine reproduction of the School's performance. But there is an added enjoyment to be had in listening to this Messiah when one considers how it was achieved.
The two choral groups at School are voluntary bodies meeting each week, the larger of them not particularly selective so that this choral society takes in more than those who are musically gifted. The soloists, Beth Hughes, Jennifer Salsbury, Alison MacNair and Leigh Wetherill held their own remarkably well beside the more powerful and experienced singing of Tom Hall (tenor) and Leonard Lynch (bass). In the size of the choir and in the orchestra of local musicians we could enjoy the work of a large community brought carefully and with obvious pleasure to a standard of performance that gave us the comfortable feeling of success. We who listened felt this warmth too, I think, because we were all part of the community from which the performers came, from School and village, as parents or staff.
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