Page 6 - Abingdon News

ARTS
6 September 2014
Who You Gonna Call?
Journey’s End
Music’s
Spanish Tour
Immediately after
term was over both
First Orchestra and
Chapel Choir left
for a week-long
tour of Catalonia
in northern Spain. Based in the town
of Corbera, just outside Barcelona, the
musicians gave performances in a number
of venues including Barcelona’s gothic
cathedral, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, the
Romanesque cathedral of Tarragona
and the basilica of the monastery of
Montserrat. The tour was a fine finale for
many of the members of the group whose
Abingdon swansong this was. n
Getting to Grips with Shakespeare
Designed to introduce young pupils to Shakespeare, and make them realise that he’s
much more interesting than they think he is, the Lower School Shakespeare Day on
20 June did just that. The boys were divided into four groups and each spent the day
preparing for a performance of a summarised version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Macbeth, Hamlet or The Tempest. The boys surprised themselves by just how much fun
the whole thing was and as one boy put it, “I think the School should do this type of day
more often”. n
With fewer cast members due to Summer term commitments
some of the remaining cast members had to take on extra roles.
None of this was evident on the night, which passed off seamlessly
with everyone giving very impressive performances. n
Reflecting the
commemorative mood,
fourth-year drama pupils
performed extracts from
RC Sheriff’s classic First
World War play, Journey’s
End, for their exam
piece last term. With
an impressive trench
‘dug-out’ for the set, and
period army uniforms
for costumes, the cast
succeeded in producing
an extremely convincing
piece of theatre. n
Delayed by illness from its scheduled date last March a new slot was
eventually found for the Lower School production of Who You Gonna Call?
Chapel Choir in the
basilica at Montserrat
Announcing the concert
with bagpipes outside the
cathedral in Tarragona