House Drama

After last year’s House Drama competition unexpectedly turned out to be the final live theatre event from the Drama department before COVID arrived and messed everything up, it came as no surprise that nothing would prevent House Drama from taking place this year, even if it had to go completely digital. Although the various safety restrictions posed a considerable challenge to the usual proceedings, rehearsals went ahead mostly on schedule and indeed this year’s rendition proved to be quite a unique experience, becoming an online event screened exclusively from people’s homes.

All four houses pushed forward and promised that this would be a night to be remembered, packed with a high-quality range of performances, genres and styles, all of which were judged by Director-in-Residence and PGS alumni James Gulliford.

Monologue-wise, there was some steep competition between the houses with a strong variety of compelling character pieces; Jacob French of Whitcombe did a fantastic piece from Lord of the Flies, Annie Jenkins from Grant provided a spirited rendition of Goodbye Charles and some guy from Latter whose name currently escapes me gave an energetic portrayal of a mental breakdown from Better Call Saul, loud enough in fact that Nicholas Lemieux it elicited a complaint from his sister working upstairs. The winner however was ultimately Maisie English from Smith for a truly harrowing performance from the upcoming Sixth Form play Monsters as a mother struggling to handle her grief over her son’s murder, a well-earned victory for Smith on the whole.

Equally impressive was the collection of duologues, masterfully pulled off in creative manners despite COVID restrictions. The evening saw some truly masterful adaptations

Annie Jenkins Archie Elliot, Isabelle Durrant

of the likes of Miranda, Damsels in Distress and a particularly creative adaptation of Scribbles in the Margins. But ultimately, the winners for best duologue were Archie Elliot and Isabelle Durrant from Whitcombe with their tensionfilled portrayal of a scene from The Unreturning between a mother and her morally conflicted son just returned from the army.

Maisie English the highest scores, reclaiming its trophy from two years prior.

All in all it was a fantastic evening and showcase in highlighting the sheer dramatic talent from the pupils of this school. To pull it all off under such challenging circumstances is no small feat and is surely a testimony to the skills of each house in organising such strong performance. Well done Whitcombe indeed!

Finally, rounding off the evening, the group projects from each house again faced a similar series of trials and tribulations but still yielded strong results with an incredible line-up of pieces from a diverse set of genres and tones. Latter went the way of the classic British farce with The Real Inspector Hound, Whitcombe elected to for the mystery direction with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Grant went for the classic sitcom set-up with a fast-paced adaptation of Brooklyn NineNine. It was a close call but Best Group was ultimately awarded to Grant. In addition, in assessing the entire evening, Best Actor went to Duncan Jeynes of Latter whilst Best Actress was awarded to Freya Stevens of Whitcombe. In the end, Whitcombe came out on top with

Nicholas Lemieux