In Key Stage 3, the students follow a lively programme which as well as making links with the curriculum in other subjects, helps the students develop their performance skills such as mime, improvisation and movement. Textual and devised work is also engaged with. We pride ourselves in creating an environment where everyone feels valued and respected, and are thus free to make contributions which exhibit their potential.

On Tuesday 31 January the Drama department took a group of Year 10 pupils to see the award-winning "Avenue Q" at the Theatre Royal in Bath.

The hilarious musical has been touring since its hugely successful runs in America and the London West End, where the The Times dubbed it the "musical of the decade".

It would be hard to conceive of a more apt oxymoron than that of the ‘merry war’ between Beatrice and Benedick. The school’s triumphant interpretation of Shakespeare’s much-loved play was, as The Bard himself would have said, a very palpable hit!

Shahrazad crooked an admonishing finger and said ‘Listen’; as if at her command, forth came an amazing array of characters from the fantastical world of the Thousand and One Nights: resourceful artisans, capricious monarchs, kindly viziers, shrewish wives, tumblers and beggars, ghouls, thieves and dervishes. In this production the numerous actors, besides Shahrazad, had their own tales to narrate as well as enact and the audience were kept spellbound by the energy and originality poured out in every scene.

The Lower School Production of the Arabian Nights, based on the famous legend of Shahrazad who has to tell stories to save herself from execution, was a spectacular piece of theatre. The stage of the Merlin Theatre was draped in richly coloured lengths of silk; indeed silk and other materials featured strongly in creating the effects required by these darkly comic, and sometimes grotesque, stories. The cloaks of the forty thieves in Ali Baba had splendid gold linings which – with a clever bit of choreography – evoked the interior of a cave filled with glittering treasure; a length of green silk brilliantly called up the river into which a baby is thrown; black gauzy material turned the cast instantly and nightmarishly into stone.

Complex theatrical effects like these, delivered with precision and pace, do not come without a huge amount of hard work on the part of the cast and the directors. The Lower School pupils are to be congratulated on tackling this demanding theatrical extravaganza with such confidence and professionalism. Damian Todres and Bella Hooper, the directors, wrote in the programme introduction that they had found it ‘a delight to encourage the cast to work as dynamic ensemble, well beyond their years’.

This show was certainly all about teamwork: everyone made a significant contribution and often played multiple parts. It therefore seems wrong to pick out individual names. However Emily Watson did make a poised and graceful Shahrazad, Tommy Morgan and Ryan Lee were hilarious as Ali Baba and his ill-fated brother, Kasim, and the audience was also struck by the budding puppeteers Anneka Hart and Lucie Sullivan who operated the Talking Bird.

But truly the show belonged to the whole cast. The Headmaster, Mr Priestley, thanked the directors and the cast and said how proud he was that every year the Lower School continues to bring out productions of exceptional quality. Like Sharayar the King (Tobi Ecclestone), we were thoroughly entertained and look forward to the next one.

Warminster Lower School’s production of Wind in the Willows at the Merlin last week gave the Headmaster, he said, ‘aching face muscles from smiling so much’. This is because both he and the rest of the audience had been transported by the joy and exuberance that Warminster School children brought to this classic tale.

The play, the famous adaptation by Alan Bennett, started with all the woodland characters, rabbits, otters, weasels, stoats and the like, performing a funky street dance and so bringing a youthful, contemporary buzz to the Edwardian glades of Berkshire. It also set the tone for the entire evening - this was going to be a production in which the whole cast gave it their all.

The main thrust of the story, as we all know, is about the exploits of the irrepressible Toad and how he is eventually saved from the results of his own foolishness by his loyal friends.

Matt Stone’s portrayal of Toad was masterly: swaggering, enthusiastic, capricious, mischievous and generous in equal measure. His assumed prostration in the invalid chair as he beguiles Ratty into believing he is in a terminal decline was a high point:

‘ I could have been an actor I suppose though it’s no job for someone of my intelligence.’

and it brought the house down.

Alex Shad as Ratty and Kathryn Rush as the Mole were both ‘thowoughly’ nice chaps and portrayed very well the contrasting characters of these two unlikely friends; Jordan Hitch gave a deep-throated gravitas to the role of Badger.

This is of course a landscape peopled with a rich variety of characters: Ben Higgens’ down-trodden horse Albert, Hannah Connabeer’s Bargewoman, Jess Stannard’s Gaoler’s daughter and the sinister black-clad brotherhood of Stoats and Weasels (Chris Cox, Huw Vaughan-Johns, Will Pratt, Harry Lee, Skip Greig and Hamish Godbold), were all particularly memorable.

Congratulations must go as well to those behind the scenes especially to Miss O’Brien for a charming and effective set, and props which were bound to prove a challenge: a boat for messing about on the river, a canary-coloured cart and, of course, that motor car…. In the event, all these items were satisfyingly three-dimensional and capable of movement and must have required hours of work by the production team.

Thank you to Mr Todres and Miss Hooper for directing The Wind in the Willows this year and for making such a delightful evening possible. The audience loved it and the performers quite obviously loved doing it.