St Mary's Calne
We were delighted to present this year's Junior Play, 'The Idiot Judge and other Stories', an anthology of four short plays, in the last week of the Summer Term. The plays were taken from a collection of dramatizations of old folk tales from all the corners of the globe, written by Steve Fitzpatrick in the 1980s.
LIV began an upbeat evening with The Prince’s Bride, a twist on the old Rapunzel story, in which Annabel played a headstrong girl who ended up being helped by three strange old ‘aunts’ to achieve the honour of marrying the Prince. Georgia excelled as the bossy Mother and Ami and Delphina were a very funny double act as the King and Queen.
This was followed by the first of the two MIV tales, The Idiot Judge. Jade starred as the intellectually challenged parish judge, Shemiaka. His ignorant, bribe-influenced and very frustrating decisions were corrected by Athena as Elena, a visiting wise woman who saw through the successive claimants’ greed and dishonesty.
We then travelled to the Middle East with one of the original Arabian Nights stories, Maruf the Cobbler, the story of a henpecked husband who ends up with untold riches and becomes the new King of Egypt! Maruf was played with great clarity and verve by Tabitha, and this was the play that borrowed most from the physical and storytelling traditions.
Finally, LIVW brough things to a riotous close with the truly dark comedy The Two Brothers, in which Bea L. starred as Big Peter, an arrogant so-and-so, who, out of jealousy and resentment tried everything in his power to undermine and even kill his Younger Brother, Little Peter, played by Hero. Bea & Hero were superb, and were more than matched by their respective wives, played by Ava and Claudia F.
The audience were reduced to fits of laughter by the outrageous events and gave raptuous applause at the well-deserved curtain call for all four casts.
More photos can be found on our Flickr.
Mr Duncan Ellis,
Director of Drama