My five favourite plays
1
chosen by ...
Adam Cross
Adam is director of drama at King’s
College School, Wimbledon, and
a visiting examiner for Edexcel.
Previously, he was learning
and teaching co-ordinator at
Shakespeare’s Globe, and directorin-residence at Eton College. He
has worked as a director and script
developer for the National Theatre
and the Liverpool Everyman and
Playhouse. He is also an NQT
induction tutor and lead trainer for
School Direct programmes.
2
Sweeney
Todd
music and lyrics by
Stephen Sondheim,
book by Hugh Wheeler
The Madness
of George III
by Alan Bennett
Faber & Faber
ISBN 978-0-571-31675-5
Nick Hern Books
ISBN 978-1-85459-108-1
Cast At least 24 (mainly male)
Themes and issues King George III
Cast 8 principals, plus an expandable
allegedly shook hands with a tree,
believing it was the King of Prussia.
Bennett’s modern classic sets the painful
tale of one man’s mental deterioration
against the political wrangling of his
family and government. The great final
revelation for George is that the ‘show’ of
stability – political as well as mental – is
as important as its very existence. More
than 250 years since his coronation,
commentators may feel George’s
wisdom retains a palpable ring of truth.
chorus (and a full band of 26!)
Themes and issues ‘The history of
the world, my sweet, is who gets eaten
and who gets to eat’, sings Sweeney as
he hatches his notorious plan. Taking us
by surprise, however, is that behind the
grotesque comedy and perfectly scored
mayhem sits a jetpack of political fury.
Our title character, in a sense, could be
anyone lost and fighting an oppressive
system, and the industrial clunk of
scenery in Harold Prince’s original 1970s
production owed more to Brecht than
to Broadway.
Performance matters First seen at
the National Theatre in 1991, the play
was subsequently an Oscar-winning
film, and its cinematic potential is
immediately striking on the page.
Swathes of characters greet us: a
panoramic sweep of the Georgian court.
The challenge for a stage production is
to negotiate rapidly changing locations,
and a wide array of figures, without
losing a sense of the intensely personal
story at the heart of the piece: to keep it
moving, while keeping it moving.
Performance matters Aside from a
string of vibrant, complex leads, there is
great fun to be had with the ensemble.
Are we to see them as helpless
bystanders in grim Victorian London,
or a cruel expression of Todd’s warped
conscience?
Why it’s great Sondheim’s
incomparable score. There’s also
definitely something of a cathartic
fantasy about Sweeney’s killing spree:
he is Hamlet let loose; Titus Andronicus
(with many more pies).
Why it’s great Few 20th-century
plays offer the sheer volume and range
of colourful, comic characters, but
the play is also a masterclass in ‘epic
intimacy’. When ‘Zadok the Priest’
reaches its crescendo at the end of Act I,
as the isolated King is strapped into his
‘treatment chair’, hairs stand on end.
Watch out for The way Sondheim
masterfully relates specific, recurrent
musical phrases to individual
characters; often layering these one
upon another to create irony and
subtext. Insanely clever.
Watch out for The scene late on in
which George recites King Lear with
his courtiers, pausing painfully as he
gets to the line ‘I fear I am not in my
perfect mind’.
Sweeney Todd in 2010
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Teaching Drama · Summer term 1 · 2013/14
Nela Pecher
All images are of King’s College School,
Wimbledon productions
Nela Pecher
The Madness of
George III from 2011
www.teaching-drama.co.uk
3
4
A Matter
of Life and
Death
by Tom Morris and
Emma Rice
5
A Midsummer
Night’s
Dream
Oberon Books
ISBN 978-184002-781-5
Penguin Shakespeare
ISBN 978-0-14-101260-5
Cast At least 12
Themes and issues Kneehigh’s
Cast At least 22
Themes and issues Sometimes
adaptation of the classic Powell and
Pressburger film premiered to mixed
reviews in 2007, but the text is witty,
fleet of foot, and balances affectionate
send up of the ‘Ealing comedy’ genre
with a whole-hearted belief in the
transformative power of human
relationships. Why shouldn’t love
conquer all?
viewed (and yawned at) as the perennial
‘school play’, Dream is much darker than
first meets the eye. It may be set on the
summer solstice, but sunlight is in fact
surprisingly absent. The action unfolds
in rainy gloom, the night-time affording
mortal characters a break from their
rational selves, whether they like it or not.
Why it’s great It celebrates
existential masterpiece there’s a fine
line between knowing your mind and
losing it. Caligula applies logic to a
nihilistic extreme: ruling through chaos
to mirror what he perceives to be an
orderless world. It’s an uncomfortable,
disarming experience to watch – theatre
of ideas in its purest form.
Performance matters For a talented,
charismatic young actor, Caligula
is a gift of a part, but be conscious
that the success of the piece hinges
largely on this performance. It can
work fantastically well with a teenager
though, because an audience must
be as sympathetic to the character’s
fragility and child-like logic as they are
frustrated by his obstinacy.
Why it’s great It’s innately theatrical
because of the poetic resonance of its
text and visuals. It teaches students
why theatre is theatre, and why – for a
certain type of discourse – we need it
more than any other medium.
Why it’s great Basically because
teenagers understand infatuation,
and the kind of intense emotional
shifts that drive the narrative. Change
is fundamental. Bottom, of course,
enjoys perhaps the best-known
anthropomorphosis in world drama – but
the most remarkable transformation is
that of four young lovers who, through
their encounters with the impulsive
sprites of the forest, learn to appreciate
‘true delight’ in one another’s company.
They gradually see the wood for the trees.
imagination and romance, and is
unashamedly sentimental.
Watch out for References that will
have cinema buffs chortling, such as to
the original film’s famous mashup of
monochrome and technicolor.
Students perform A Matter of Life
and Death, 2013
by Albert Camus,
translation by
David Greig
Cast At least 10
Themes and issues In this dark,
Performance matters The nature
of the play’s setting is important. It’s
not a specific one – both elsewhere and
else-when. The Athens we start in and
return to is a cruelly patriarchal society,
where a father may threaten to ‘dispose
of’ his daughter if she disobeys him, but
the references are diverse. A production
needs to take some clear decisions as
to how the mortal and spiritual worlds
relate, but within this there is room for
endless creativity.
might expect from Kneehigh, there
is endless room for play. My school’s
version (pictured below) was set in a
Victorian toy theatre; the horizontal
of the proscenium arch becoming the
wingspan of the plane from which Peter
declares his love for June in his dying
moments. In your version, as the text
itself encourages at one point, ‘you can
do it however you like’.
Caligula
Faber & Faber
ISBN 978-0-571-22095-3
by William
Shakespeare
Performance matters As you
My five favourite plays
Watch out for David Greig’s spare,
savagely funny translation and the
necessity for one actor to eat a whole
raw onion on stage.
KCS students perform
Caligula in 2011
Watch out for The moon’s ‘silver
visage’, which looms bright throughout
the play; its very circularity a shining
reminder that growing up and learning
about ourselves are as inevitable as
waking up from a night’s sleep, or a
theatre performance coming to an end.
www.teaching-drama.co.uk
Rob Brady
Nela Pecher
Nela Pecher
2013 production
of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
Teaching Drama · Summer term 1 · 2013/14
39