KINGS’ SCHOOL
PROM 2016
The Kings’ Prom 2016 was a great
success offering a fun packed
Casino style evening to over 300
ex-Year 11 pupils. They all arrived
in style looking elegant and ready
for the night ahead. Kings’ School
is one of the few schools who
still run the Prom on site but it
is transformed with marquees
and decorations to create a great
surprise to all. After an evening
of roulette and black jack, the expupils danced the night away before
a fantastic firework display signalled
the end of their time at Kings’. Amid
a tearful goodbye they made their
way out into the world – well via
the Toddfest after party anyway!
Sports Awards Evening
July 2016
The Crucible
Following the huge
success of ‘The Lion King’
in 2015, Kings’ School
Drama department have
relished the opportunity
to reproduce Miller’s
account of the 17thcentury witch trials in
Salem, Massachusetts. The
drama is staged with a
mixture of simplicity and
dramatic power that builds
up an ominous feeling of
trepidation and fear.
As a result this chilling
play creates a harrowing
intensity, as the girls, under
the dangerous spell of their
ringleader Abigail Williams
(menacingly performed by Natalie Davey),
accuse countless decent people in the village
of witchcraft. Only gradually does it become
clear that Abigail has her own motives for
revenge.
The performance brings the audience
excitingly close to the action as the witchhunters prosecute the innocent villagers. The
stark simplicity of the staging and costumes
along with performances from the dogmatic
authoritarian Judge Danforth (formidably
performed by Bradley Hart) creates a feeling
of unease about the piece, conjuring the
dread of a bad dream from which you can’t
awake.
The performances of the teenage girls who
make the lurid allegations of witchcraft
often speak in creepy unison, screeching
and howling, shaking their long hair and
writhing on the floor. There is an authentic
edge of collective hysteria about them.
Oscar Pooley offers an engrossing
interpretation of John Proctor, with blazing
eyes and a righteous fury about him. His
deep guilt about his brief affair with Abigail,
who has become his nemesis, is powerfully
On Friday evening the PE
Department at Kings’ school
Winchester hosted its annual
sports awards barbeque and
presentation evening. The
school has enjoyed exceptional
sporting success both locally
and nationally this year and also
enjoyed a highly successful boys
and girls Easter hockey tour to
the Netherlands, as well as an
excellent girls netball tour to
Liddington. The school prides
itself on its games prowess, but
has also continued to achieve
national success in biathlon.
The evening isn’t simply about elite performers
however and all pupils who have frequently
participated in the school’s wide range of House
events and extra-curricular sporting activities
were also recognised with the Half or Full
Colours.
In football, netball, rugby, cricket and tennis the
school has brought home numerous Hampshire
titles, but as a result of not only winning the
Hampshire U16 cup, but also finishing as ESFA
National Cup runners up after an agonising
penalty shoot- out, the U16 girls’ football team
deservedly took home the coveted team of the
year award.
caught. And his final reconciliation with his wife,
sensitively played by Rachel Leitzell, who admits her
own part in their troubles, proves both guarded and
moving.
Gemma Wilson’s terrified Mary Warren desperately
tries to tell the truth whilst Jacob Corrie movingly
As regards to the individual awards Joshua
Dodd the very proud recipient of the Paralympic
Legacy Award, for his contribution to boccia
and wheelchair basketball. The London 2012
Olympic Legacy Award deservedly went to head
boy Alejandro Arguelles for his demonstration
of the Olympic ideals, alongside his supreme
sporting and athletic talents. Which only left
the Thompson Award, named after Kings’ first
head of PE, which recognises an outstanding
contribution to school sport. With such a
talented and deserving year group this was a
really tough contest, but the all- round brilliance
of Kate Wiseman meant she walked away with
the final award of the night.
captures the crisis of conscience of the Rev John Hale
who realises a dreadful travesty of justice has been
done. All of the cast have really risen to the challenge
of such a substantial and multi layered script,
highlighting again the wonderful talent of the pupils at
Kings’ School.