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DRAMA

A challenging and varied drama programme kicked off in October with the F-block demonstration: a bravura display of the technical skill of the theatre crew, masterminded by Chris Lee (EJNR) and his new group of Farrer Keepers. This provoked a flood of new recruits backstage and augurs well for the future health of the expanding student production team.

Within days, the first house play of the season opened with PGW’s The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Venomous aphorisms and verbal mathematics carved through the air of the Caccia as a seemingly endless array of serving staff processed up and down the staircases. Led by Katya Allot and assisted by the actor and lighting designer William Webster (PGW), a gifted quartet of Will Hobbs (PGW), Jack Finnis (PGW), brothers Freddie and George Zu Wied (PGW), orchestrated the rise and fall of the story and the waves of laughter from the audience.

From the delicate music of Wilde’s dialogue we moved to the rolling tragedy of Miller, as the Michaelmas school play The Crucible, directed by ML, powered onto the Farrer stage. On a bleak and threatening landscape (designed with visual elegance and economy by Matilde Marangoni) a talented ensemble cast brought both menace and contemporary nuance to Arthur Miller’s exploration of group hysteria – and, at its heart lived a performance of stirring intensity by Michael Olantunji (PAH) as John Proctor.

Michael Olatunji (PAH) in the M18 School Play, The Crucible

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A short intake of oxygen over long leave and we were plunged into the macabre confines of a violent London nightclub in the independent play, MOJO. The dark music of Butterworth’s breakthrough play was beautifully realised by the director William Comaish (DWG), as his six actors hustled the audience through an evening of humour and high tension in the Empty Space studio.

Nearly every boy in RDO-C was onstage in a remarkable house production that followed in November: Enron, charting the painful trajectory of corporate folly and personal denial, saw scenes of intimacy and drive move to choreographed set pieces of real spectacle in an evening of great dramatic force directed by RGS. A giant set of windows overshadowing the action was the frame for a stunning video design by Dowon Jung (KS), and the background to a series of imaginative lighting effects from Nicholas Evans (SPH), Nicholas Dennison ( JDM) and William Webster.

Following the perennial exam showing of GCSE drama students in the Empty Space (an inventive physical theatre version of Greek Myths) the half finished with an unrestrained comic explosion in the BJH house play Is he Dead? This was the first house play for the producer James Holdsworth and the last in a distinguished and varied career as a director for JPB, and the warmth and collegiality of the evening was as much a product of their great friendship as it was a testament to spirit and good humour of the house. Christian East (BJH) was outstanding as the young anguished French painter, (in all registers of undress) in the finest tradition of the comic grotesque.

Sandwiched between these fully mounted productions there were also in-house plays within PEPW and AW; PB marshalled a spirited cast of actors in the darkly apt Unman, Wittering and Zigo for Manor House, and NCH somehow managed to present forty-seven out of fifty-two boys onstage over seventy minutes of irreverence and wit at Villiers.Wilf Evans (RDO-C) in the M18 RDO-C House Play, Enron

Jude Martin (NPTL) in the M18 Independent Play, Mojo

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The Film Unit, under the tutelage of RBKB, have continued their series of cinema workshops, the highlight being two days working with award-winning film director Udayan Prasad on structure and story-telling. They have also been steadily building up their stock of film equipment in anticipation of the summer months, where the welcome change in weather will lead to them testing their skills on location.

The Lent drama season snapped into life with the first production by our new Director-in- Residence, Grace Vaughan. Zero for Young Dudes, Alistair McDowall’s provocative exploration of justice, incarceration and revolution, was explored with remarkable intensity by a gifted acting ensemble from JCAJ. Tension and surreal humour sat side by side in a disturbing and evocative series of nights in the Caccia.

A week later and the directing duo of Adrien Rolet (DWG) and Ivo Pope (PEPW) brought to the same space a project they had been developing for some years: Ibsen’s Enemy of the people.

Built around a gripping and febrile central performance by Will Leckie ( JD), and supported by an innovative lighting design by Robert McGlone (DWG), this independent production placed the story of a man of integrity and his fall from grace in the shadow of the current political situation in the US, with all the attendant power and disquiet.

From earnest to energised, as the Farrer Theatre welcomed in the first major production of the new year, the JMG house play One Man Two Guvnors. Ollie Taylor ( JMG) gave a performance of immaculate physical comedy, imperious timing and outrageous improvisation, through two hours of joyous mayhem in Richard Bean’s award winning play.

Angus Graham-Campbell (MNF 67) managed to coax both freedom and ferocious verbal precision from the actors whilst marshaling the many comic complexities with customary dexterity. The greatest testament to its success was the enormous chit queue that emerged on the last two nights, as word of the play spread around the school.

The focus then shifted inwards, to the troubling inner world of a group of teenagers and the unraveling of a lie. DNA, by Dennis Kelly, was staged with real claustrophobic menace by JMR in the Caccia Studio, where strident seventies rock and classical string chamber music combined to transport the audience to a world of suggestion and supposition, with standout performances by Jacques Engels (EJNR) and Flynn Studholme (EJNR) as a doomed couple at the centre of the narrative.

Two weeks later and ten feet up, in the Empty Space, there was another demonstration of psychological interrogation in The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. Here, extracts from his award-winning play were set alongside a sequence from Steven Berkoff ’s East in a performance of vocal and physical athleticism by the A level theatre studies students.

The final house play in the Caccia was Single Spies, where a seemingly endless series of royal butlers emerged from JD to populate the world of the Windsors, and Cold War Moscow, in Allan Bennett’s study of class and betrayal. Matilde Marangoni and ML once again combining to produce a mis en scène both beautiful to look at and delightful to listen to. Jumah Brandt ( JD) as The Queen showing instinctive regal finesse and impeccable comic timing.

The school was privileged to have the renowned playwright, Mark Ravenhill, acting as the judge for the House Drama Competition and, from a healthy number of entrances, the winning scene

came from Three More Sleepless Nights by Caryl Churchill. With remarkable, and remarked-upon, maturity from both Thomas Roberts (PAH) and Inigo Baden-Powell (PAH), PAH inched ahead of a strong field of finalists. JMR had rebooted and reinvigorated the competition this year and Mark was a fitting invigilator for this year’s theme of ‘crossing boundaries’ having just completed the script for the new Royal Shakespeare Company musical Boy in a Dress.

Twenty-four hours later the Empty Space was the setting for a different display of talent: the GCSE drama students presented a rolling series of classical extracts, over four hours, to three different audiences and one indefatigable examiner.

The half was also distinguished by five excellent in-house productions, all of which showcased acting and technical work that would have graced far larger theatre spaces. Staged in the round in the newly renovated Games Room of Common Lane House, JDN’s production of South Downs transported the audience to a public school in 1962, focusing particularly on a lonely first year pupil separated by class. Wonderfully directed by Grace Vaughan, each of the four evenings provoked both laughter and thought, as the play reflected on the true aims of education and the self-loathing many teenagers experience.

The stunning venue of MGHM’s Prayers Hall was the scene for four nights of unrelenting short pieces of comic brilliance directed by NCH. Somehow, again, he managed to get almost every single boy in the house onstage, with Oli Hotchin (MGHM), Jake Simpson (MGHM) and Alban Nolan (MGHM) shining amidst an abundance of talent.

Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound may be more than fifty years old but it came up witty and as fresh as paint (just like the Director himself, former Director of Drama and now happy retiree, Peter Broad). Kit Bashaarat (ASR) and Jake Reid (ASR) made for a frighteningly convincing pair of critics in Moon and Birdboot, with a fine performance too from Mugumba Wilkins (ASR), a talented actor of whom Eton has seen too little. But the stage was rather stolen from entrance to dénouement by a decidedly uninhibited ‘Cynthia’, in the hands of Saxon Stacey (ASR). Those who let themselves be enveloped for the evening in fogbound Muldoon Manor, suspiciously similar to ASR’s drawing room, will long remember the experience.

NCH’s dark, detailed production of Handbag, left audiences deeply enthralled. JMOB’s game room became the tense rehearsal room for an upcoming production of The Importance of Being Earnest with an unlikely cast of characters practicing the play within the play. As they tackled Wilde’s comedy, the dark truths that led to this group ending up together in a controlled facility became both captivating and deeply moving.

And lastly, in the final week of the half, LEM guided a one-off performance of scenes and sketches by Orloff and Rand that drew both house and parents together in a warm and convivial evening of drama staged in the SPH dining room. Much credit must go to the Farrer technical team and the wonderful student crew who managed to set up and operate portable lighting and sound kits in all parts of the college to make this work.

The beginning of March saw our first group of students take their LAMDA exams guided expertly by RZRG. The previous fortnight there had been an open dress for parents and friends and it is hugely encouraging to see how much appetite there is for performance currently at the school.

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The Film Unit has had an incredibly busy half gearing up for the first-ever Eton Film Festival. The ‘undergraduate’ group is working on a long-form film, Turncoat, directed by Greg Cusworth ( JDN) and produced by Toby Berryman (RDO-C). Meanwhile, the graduates have been working on a film called Apocalypse Newscast under the direction of Max Shanagher (EJNR) and Lorenzo Harvey Allchurch (HWTA), with the invaluable assistance of RRS. All members of the Unit have worked hard to hone their skills since beginning the course and we are all excited to finally see the fruits of their labour on the Festival day early next half.

Love, in all its baffling delight, was the subject of the summer school play As You like it, directed by RSH in the Farrer. George Carter (NA) and Jack Finnis as Rosalind and Celia respectively, led the audience through the many paths of the forest with a mix of emotional honesty and dazzling wit, the all-male cast providing the perfect starting point to Shakespeare’s dizzying gender swapping – so much so that at one point a boy was playing a girl playing a boy playing a girl. Haunting original music was provided by the composer in residence, Frederick Viner, sung live by a gifted ensemble, and this country harmony tumbled into a joyous final dance accompanied by music from The Bee Gees. Jude Martin (NPTL) gave us a fool that had both an acid tongue and the melancholy of exile, matched by a performance by Obonya Obe (SPH) as Jaques that captured the poetry and mystery of the character.

The Lower boy Play explored the darker side of the forest in Grimm – a reimagining of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s celebrated narratives that saw the Caccia Studio move inside the writers’ minds. The centre of the space was dominated by a majestic enveloping tree, from which shadow silhouettes and actors would emerge to trace the tales with rough magic. The Director in residence, Grace Vaughan, teased out the stories with improvisation and physical theatre techniques, the whole evening made up of original devised material from the cast and bespoke dialogue by Ollie Taylor.

From the stage to screen next with the inaugural Eton College Film Festival. Masterminded by our Film-maker in Residence, Robbie Belok, and Rubin Soodak, the gifted Annenberg Fellow, around

Obonya Obe (SPH), Hugh Shilson ( JRBS) and Jonathan Honnor (NCWS) in the S19 School Play, As You Like It

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two hundred students gathered in the theatre to watch a series of short films written, directed, acted, and edited by the Eton Film Unit. It was an exhilarating ride through their last twelve months of work, and a great testament to the new wave of filmmakers coming through the school.

Over in the empty space the talented trio of George Moross (MGHM), Max Owen (NPTL) and William Webster delighted and enlightened those drawn to watch the A level devised show, with a piece based on deception and adolescence. RGS once again helping to bring both physical precision and emotional power from the performers.

Meanwhile over in Eton Wick, Calum Baker ( JMG) was busy establishing a new initiative with his Theatre in the Community programme. Designed to teach children how to harness the power of storytelling, this course explored how ideas and values can be expressed through the medium of theatre. With the assistance of Lorenzo Harvey Allchurch (HWTA), he worked with a group of nine year olds to develop three very different pieces inspired by issues the children chose themselves. It proved to be hugely enjoyable both for the students and for those fortunate to see it.

Five B Blockers, supported by Peter Broad, staged a thought-provoking reminder of the stories behind some of the names on the wall of the Cloisters and Colonnade. Alexander Angelini-Hurll ( JDN), Nicholas Evans, Jude Martin (NPTL), James McLean (AMM) and Ollie Taylor lent their voices to a series of letters, written by soldiers not much older than themselves. Each of these missives were to one man: G. W. Headlam, affectionately known as Tuppy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these letters hold much in common. They complain of the endless mud, wet clothing, and interminable gun fire familiar to every schoolchild from the verses of Sassoon, Owen, and Brooke. They laud the bravery of their men and lament the ineptitude of their superiors; reminisce about military manoeuvres well wrought and allude to (only half-jokingly) their hope for a wound bad enough to take them out of the trenches for the rest of the War. It was a production that managed to be genuinely moving without gratuitousness or schmaltz. A fitting end to a summer laced with the memory of another war. No one who saw ‘My dearest Tuppy...’ will be able to walk past the catalogues of the fallen without thinking of the hundreds upon hundreds of letters that they left behind.

Scott Handy (NAR 86)

Tom Moody-Stuart (MGHM) in the S19 Lower Boy Play, Grimm