The Oxford Shakespeare Company, fresh from performing their A Comedy of Errors in London, happily agreed to open their Oxford summer season a day early especially for Leckford students and parents!
Reviewed by The Guardian as 'an exuberant outdoor production — faultless performances, a toe-tapping, heart-warming hoot', a wonderful summer’s afternoon was enjoyed by all! Against the beautiful backdrop of the Wadham College gardens, we were treated to a musical and modern interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known comedies.
The performance retained the puns and slapstick style typical of Shakespeare’s comedies with more modern twists and audience interaction making the play more engaging and easy to follow than is often the case with Shakespeare productions. A huge thank you to those parents who came along to share the day!
— Words and photo by Joanne Williams, English teacher
Year 8 students of French and Spanish travelled to Surrey, back in February, to take part in the 'Love Languages' competition held by the City of London Freemen's School. Students performed a five minute piece in their chosen foreign language, in front of audience and judges.
Below is a short account by year 8 student Genevieve Reeves:
We had an amazing time at the Love Languages Competition. It took place at City of London Freemen's School in Surrey so the build-up was really exciting.
It was really fun making up our own script but it was hard to translate it into Spanish and French. The food we were given was great, particularly the huge doughnuts!
It was really nice to see other schools perform and listen to conversations in different languages.
Overall I think that the experience was fantastic and I can't wait until next year!
Back in January, two teams represented Leckford Place at the Rotary ‘Youth Speaks’ public speaking competition. This was the local area competition Intermediate Section hosted by Cherwell School.
Team A (Year 8) consisted of Jesse Weeks (Proposer), James Lambert (Speaker) and Hovnan Eayrs (Chairman). James gave an animated and amusing talk entitled ‘Why do the Goodies Always Win?’
Year 7 was represented by Team B (above) comprising Sophia Saban (Speaker), William Nicholson (Chairman) and Jack Valentine (Proposer). Sophia entertained us with tales of her family Christmas spent with an eccentric relative.
Against some strong competition, Leckford Place stood out as having two equally impressive teams. Our speakers and supporters presented their own well prepared material in a confident and natural style.
Although they did not bring home one of the two prizes — and that must have been by the narrowest of margins — Sophia and James were given well-deserved praise by the judges for their confident presence on stage. They also won the spontaneous praise of several members of the audience.
— Writeup kindly provided by Lesley Lambert, parent
As Oxford celebrated the turning on of the city's Christmas Lights on Friday evening, the newly-formed Leckford Place Choir gave its debut performance – in the magnificent surroundings of the Ashmolean Museum.
To a crowd of onlookers who thronged multiple levels of the Ashmolean's atrium, the choir sang a selection of carols and Christmas songs. The occasion was all the more special as it also marked the 1st birthday of the Ashmolean's new building.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, older students from the Sixth Form and International Study Centre performed in the d'Overbroeck's Dance Club on the main stage on Broad Street.
There will be another chance to see both groups in action: the Dance Club will perform at tonight's Sixth Form Winter Concert (Tuesday 30 November, 7pm at Leckford Place Hall), and the Leckford Place Choir will sing at the Leckford Place Winter Concert, the following week (Monday 13 December, 7pm at Leckford Place Hall). So please do come along!
This term’s imaginative and daring reimagination of The Tempest saw Shakespeare’s last, great play relocated to a technological scrapheap in the Pacific.
The Tempest is, famously, a play that sits uncomfortably within its ‘comedy’ genre: falsehood, betrayal, absolute power and impending death are woven into its fabric. Fittingly, the d’Overbroeck’s production (directed by Drama teacher Joe Swarbrick) accentuated the text’s unsettling ambivalence.
There were moments of huge dramatic impact – as harpies writhed and shrieked, and ships were torn apart in raging seas – but also times of quiet introspection.
Lydia Hassan dominated the play with an extraordinarily nuanced rendition of Prospera, veering from rage to exhultation to troubled introspection. The resulting performance was powerfully compelling – all the more remarkable when you consider the fact that this is a role typically wrestled with by professional actors as they near the end of their career.
Tal Fineman and Will Cronk’s treacherous plotting was suitably distasteful, Felicity Hughes’ Miranda and Joe Wolfensohn’s Ferdinand enacted a haltingly tender courtship, and a troupe of shimmering Ariels were in turn impish and cacophanous.
Meanwhile, the drunken ramblings of Stephano (Sam Rigal) and Trinculo (Daisy Jordan) were hilarious – offset by the disturbing presence of Sixth Former Emma Gonnella’s brilliantly played Caliban.
This week sees the long-awaited College performance of the Tempest. To whet your appetites, we caught up with Joe Swarbrick – drama teacher and the play's director for a short interview.
In the video below, Joe describes the play's aesthetic – inspired by gigantic heaps of discarded machinery – and how a 400 year-old text can tell us something today about the interplay between knowledge and power.
The video features original music written and recorded by Joe.
This term's dramatic highlight will be a d'Overbroeck's College production of the Tempest. Shakespeare's last play – a dark, brooding comedy about power, cruelty, love and magic – has been relocated to a technological junk heap in the middle of the Pacific. On this pile of discarded motherboards, monitors and technological detritus sits Prospera, usurped Duchess of Milan, and her daughter Miranda.
Caliban, their slave, the man who built the island with his mother Sycorax, plots his revenge on Prospera, while Prospera herself spies her former enemies on a passing ship. Summoning a storm with her sprite Ariel, the ship is wrecked on the shore of the island and its occupants scattered. As they all try to make sense of their new situation, they realise the island is not what it seems and that someone is controlling their every move.
A thought-provoking and visceral new interpretation of a complex and fascinating play, students from across the d'Overbroeck's family combine video, physical theatre, a cutting-edge soundtrack and exciting visual effects to bring you Shakespeare like you've never seen it before. Intense, energetic, funny and tragic by turn, this promises to be a spectacular theatrical event.
Thursday 1 & Friday 2 July, 7pm Leckford Place Hall Tickets £10 (adult), £6 (student/concession)
These were the familiar words that introduced Tuesday evening's performance of Cupid's Labyrinth at Leckford Place – an evening overflowing with musical ardour.
We were treated to a programme of solos, duets, trios and quartets that brought together songs by Purcell and Handel, operatic arias by Verdi and Mozart and extracts from the more modern operettas of Offenbach and Gilbert & Sullivan – all unified by the theme of love.
So we witnessed seduction …
… silent adoration …
… amorous competition …
… illicit liaison …
… and more. The quality of the singing was unfailingly excellent, with a talented cast of performers – from Year 7 to Sixth Form – proving themselves more than equal to some extremely demanding classical repertoire.
Towards the end of term, a thronged Leckford Place hall was treated to the jamboree of performing arts that is the Summer Soiree.
Guitar, recorder, euphonium, viola … Leckford’s instrumentalists showed off their skills – and the range of genres was similarly eclectic: from baroque to britpop, soul to showtunes. Many of the musical performances were clearly pupil-led – testament to the fertile school music scene.
And what a variety of voices! Whether it was Lydia Hassan’s captivatingly pared-down delivery of her own song, Skinny Jeans, Tal Fineman’s assured cover-versions of classic rock numbers, or Flora McGivan’s strikingly intense performance of All That Jazz, it was a pleasure to hear so many different styles and interpretations.
The whole evening was shot through with doses of comic surrealism, meanwhile, thanks to a series of year 9 performances – imaginative pieces that demonstrated the expressive possibilities of puppetry.
Last term's performance of 1920s farce Not in Front of the Waiter – featuring students from both Leckford Place and d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form – was a great success. The following writeup appears in the Oxford Times Education Directory 2009, with this week's paper.
Students from Leckford Place School and d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form took a different approach to their winter production with the comedy operetta and tribute to Offenbach, ‘Not in Front of the Waiter.’ The audience were as much part of the production as the players and singers, as the vaulted school hall was transformed into a 1920’s cabaret club for the evening. Friends, family and guests, most of whom were elegantly attired in period dress, settled themselves at candlelit tables as the action took place around them.
This lavish production was served up in a series of delicious courses of songs of the era and the main performance. For Hors d’Oeuvres, the pearl-like voices of Pankaew Saksornchai and Chanita Seedaket got the audience’s attention as they sang about Gershwin’s treacherous ‘Lorelei,’ a provocative performance, enhanced by the young singers’ abundance of feathers and fans.
For Entrée the truly scrumptious Olivia Fraser-Smith melted hearts with her husky rendition of Iving Berlin’s classic, ‘What’ll I do?’ Even compere Will Cronk struggled to keep a dry eye as he presented, for Viandes, the marvellous Ben Pugsley, Captain of d’Overbroeck’s rugby first XV, who gave a faultless performance of Denza’s ‘Funiculi Funicula.’ Dessert drew the musical prelude to a close with the opulent Fleur Rampton, who carried the audience away on her ‘Stairway to Paradise.’
A break for dinner followed as guests were lavishly served by waitresses Louisa Goodfellow and Eva Rorsman, and then onto the Plat du Jour, ‘Not in Front of the Waiter’ ….
This comedy operetta was first performed in the 1960’s as a tribute to Jacques Offenbach. The Leckford Place School players, with the help of a large aspidistra, brought it to life fabulously. The story starts with waiter Block (Will Cronk) preparing to receive his guests in the private room of a Paris restaurant. Solange (Zanni Cohen) and Prosper (Matt Thorns) enter and take a table next to an enormous aspidistra. The audience learns that they are both married, though not to each other, and out to enjoy a clandestine meeting. Moments later, Hortense (Rosie Cohen) and Aristide (Gidon Fineman) arrive at an adjoining table. They are bent on a similar amorous escapade and are indeed the wife and husband of the first couple. It is not long before all is discovered; the young ladies humorously exaggerating astonishment then indignity and a quarrel ensues. The waiter intervenes to reveal that from a strawberry mark on the ladies' shoulders, he recognises them as the daughters he shamelessly abandoned in childhood. The four listen with incredulity, then the ladies rejoice in having each found a father, a sister and also a brother-in-law. Reconciliation abounds, and all join in a song in praise of family trees.
The five players gave their all with a performance that is worthy of any professional stage. Zanni and her Sixth-Form sister Rosie Cohen, whilst their casting of siblings in the play was fortuitous, are clearly very talented young ladies. They carried their roles with precision comic timing, faultless singing and the wild emotions that drew the appropriate gasps of awe and shock from the audience. Their respective partners brilliantly played roles above their years; Matt Thorns convincingly projecting his ulterior motive with the delectable Solange, becoming the confused husband in the face of too much information to take in at once. Sixth-Former Gidon Fineman was icily cool as the highbrow Aristide, clearly a man who just wanted a quiet life, and proved himself as an actor who could effortlessly handle slapstick along with the smooth. It is worthy of note that Gidon was the recent winner of Oxfordshire County Council's first ever Young Composer competition.
These four wonderful performances were brought together with great aplomb by Will Cronk with his hilarious rendition of Block the waiter, demonstrating his talent as a comic performer with a natural instinct for timing and delivery. Very polished, he won the audience’s sympathy as the luckless Block, a man who has paid royally for his misdemeanours, only to be rewarded by this coincidental reunion.
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