By Mrs Horton (Drama Teacher)

On Thursday 7th December, the Drama Department took a group of Year 9 drama students to the Duchess Theatre in London to watch a performance of The Play That Goes Wrong. There was much anticipation leaving the school because we all had high expectations that this play would be very funny, and a great display of all the acting skills the students have been studying this half term working on their devised performances.

And it did not disappoint! We were laughing from start to finish. The play centred around a theatre company trying to put on a production of a murder mystery, except everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong! The actors forgot their lines, kept bumping into scenery, had to be replaced by understudies who didn’t know the lines, props were moved to places they weren’t expecting, and the set kept falling apart! It was a wonderful display of highly choreographed and effective slapstick, but also extremely cleverly written as jokes were set up early in the script and built upon until the climax of the play, making it even funnier to watch.

Manpriya Sira said: “I loved this trip it was one of the best ones I have been on in my time here at BGS, I loved how the designers spent so much time working with the set so the actors would still be safe while performing, I have never watched a real-life theatre production before but my standards are now set quite high for the next one to come.”

Mr Stratton (Director of Dance and Drama) added: “It was fantastic to be able to take our Year 9 students to the theatre to watch such a wonderfully hilarious play. In the GCSE and A Level syllabus, Live Theatre Evaluation is a key element and judging by how much the students engaged with this trip, I am excited to see how they develop their love of theatre. I'd like to thank the Year 9 students for being such superb BGS representatives in the theatre - they were a credit to the school.”