Thursday 17 July 2014

An Evening With the Stars?

With the summer term coming to a close, Tuesday brought with it a Performing Arts concert, to showcase the hard work undertaken by all those soon-to-be waiters and waitresses that take arts subjects. Despite some of our reservations, we sent our Arts Editor, Mark Lawless, to check it out...

The evening was dotted with music, dance and drama, and that was just some of the parents finding their seats. The first act pulled out a few fine tunes in quick succession, the Star Wars number being audible on the Head's interview with Channel 4. In said ethereal piece, one of the band members asked to 'play that same song', much to the anger of the person who was timetabling the evening. 

This was followed by some dancing, interpretive, of course (as if there is any other kind). The natural inclination was to interpret it as several people dressed in black falling about on an overly creaky stage; the interpretation the choreographer had wished to put across unbeknownst to me and most of the audience. This was followed by a more traditional ensemble, playing Baroque classics, notably so by the stupidly small and stupidly quiet instruments being played. By this point the Head had graced us with his presence, tapping his foot along (because he is an advocate of the performing arts) to what must have been, judging by his first-hand historic references in assemblies, his graduation song; Purcell's Suite in G Minor. 

Later on in the show there was an abridged (and I mean very abridged; Shakespeare would have been practically gyroscopic in his grave) version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Our review of the play, by none other than E. Rex Sean, stands to reason, however in the hall many of the students performing needed either a microphone or to talk louder. The troupe was lead by what can only be described as a camp sailor, his captain's whites ill-befitting of him; the rest standing at the back doing convincing impressions of surly teenagers.

As the evening came to a close, there came a duet dance, performed by only one student. Murmurs went up in the crowd about a split personality, and that they were performing for the two of them, but the explanation came with the fact that one of them simply wasn't there. The evening came to a close with students playing the theme to our hit show 'Doctor Eh?', with the most notable episode being 'The Day of The Doctor (Brookman)'.

I don't think Tuesday was quite an 'Evening with the Stars', because that sounds a lot like the phrase 'Everyone's a winner', but, certainly, for Hampstead, it was a step up.

No comments:

Post a Comment

DON'T GET OVERLY GASSED.