Year 6 Drama Production: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In their final week in the Junior School, Year 6 demonstrated their talent for storytelling with a thoroughly absorbing performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’. Mrs Watkins explained: the story is one of mischief and magic, as midsummer sees the fairies come out – not the pretty, pink kind of fairies, but the sort of fairies who command nature and cause all kinds of mayhem to confuse the characters and audience alike. In a well cast production, every pupil completely inhabited their characters. They perfectly embraced the silliness and hilarity of the tale, without losing any of the clarity of speech necessary to faithfully express the rhythm and rhyme of the language. A cheeky Puck darted on and off stage, creating disorder at every turn, a reluctant Demetrius attempted to run away from an amusingly lovestruck Helena, before a love potion and case of mistaken identity caused Lysander and Demetrius to both fall in love with Helena, resulting in a dramatic showdown with Hermia! Meanwhile a very endearing Bottom had his head turned into that of an ass before the pesky Puck caused Titania to become believably besotted with him. A commanding Oberon, the King of the Fairies, eventually restored order, leading to one of Shakespeare’s happier play endings. In the last act, Bottom and his hilarious friends put on a play within the play – supposedly a tragedy, but, as Shakespeare intended, instead a fantastic comedy – among the highlights were a wonderfully joyful Wall and an extremely drawn out death.

Year 6, how marvellous to celebrate the end of your time in Juniors with such a mature and entertaining performance; Mrs Watkins, thank you for bringing your own brilliant sense of fun to the direction – the whole class looked like they were enjoying themselves, and so did the audience!