Shakespeare and St Mary’s: “The Play’s the Thing”

From its earliest days, St. Mary’s has indulged in dramatic activities, even when there were only six students in 1900.  The Principal arranged suitable productions for ladies and every student was expected to take part.

Shakespeare eventually figured occasionally in the repertoire such as in 1923 when Principal Rachel Donaldson produced a version of ‘Hamlet’. Various flavours of Shakespeare arrived over the years – in 1940, ‘King Lear’s Wife’ by G. Bottomley and ‘Two Gentlemen of Soho’ by A.P. Herbert.  Later, in 1999, a series of monologues, ‘Shakespeare’s Women’, came into Arts Week.

In the new (Fergusson) building of 1952, more ambitious drama was possible on a stage with curtains instead of on mere floor space.  Drama clubs came and went until a big revival in the late 1990s. Dramatic activity developed further in the mixed St. Mary’s with the annual repertoire usually including a pantomime, a summer musical and William Shakespeare.

The SCR shares enthusiasm for Shakespeare by visits to the RSC autumn seasons at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, including ‘Hamlet’ in 2013, ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ in 2010 and more recently, ‘Julius Caesar’.  Durham Gala Theatre in February 2016, offered a National Theatre Live production of ‘As You Like It’.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

The last production in St. Mary’s old home on the peninsula. June 1952 “Our own dramatic society produced ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ on the Friday and Saturday before June Week; it was staged in the garden of 8 The College, that became  the Chorister School, on the Cathedral Close, a delightful setting which the producer used most skilfully and effectively.  It was no light task to put on a Shakespeare play in the open at the end of finals term, but everyone who saw it was full of praise for this really polished performance.”

Over 60 years later

Epiphany Term 2013 An ambitious production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by Foot of the Hill Theatre (Mary’s Drama Group re-named) transformed the dining hall into a magical Shakespearean forest.

HAMLET

1998 A revival of the Drama Society led to an ambitious production of Shakespeare’s most renowned tragedy, “A modern and innovative ‘Hamlet’, to be performed in the Assembly Rooms.  Although the cast has been drawn from across the different colleges, the central production team and impetus remain firmly rooted in St. Mary’s.  We hope that this production will be the first of many to be performed in the Assembly Rooms, that through it we may further raise the profile of the college within the University and confirm our position as a central force for drama in Durham.”

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Epiphany Term 2014 There came an innovative staging of “a brilliant version of Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’” one of his well-known comedies with hero Benedick and heroine Beatrice.

MACBETH

29^th June 2014 ‘Macbeth’, was performed on the SCR Lawn by the outdoor theatre company, Illyria (named after the country in ‘Twelfth Night’).  The audience of students, parents, staff and alumni brought their own picnics, seating and rugs.  Hot drinks were available in the dining hall on a bright but chilly evening in midsummer.

The setting of the South Lawn with the Fergusson Building on three sides and woods in the background and with its statues of Apollo and Diana and the sombre, spiky cedar tree, added an eerie atmosphere to the experience as the shadows lengthened and the blue sky faded into the sunset.

The Scottish play was energetically performed, uncut, on sixteenth century style staging, with few props and no scenery and with only five actors, said to be the number Shakespeare used when touring the provinces.

AS YOU LIKE IT

Easter 2015  The performance of this comedy had the audience in stitches with its romantic plot, disguises and mistaken identities, all unravelled in the end, in the Arcadian setting of the forest of Arden.  It contains more songs than any of Shakespeare’s other plays such as ‘Under the greenwood tree’ and, of course, the renowned speech, ‘All the world’s a stage’.

COMEDY OF ERRORS

2017 “Foot of the Hill’s Comedy of Errors found success in its absurdity of its characters and recaptured the value of Shakespeare’s early comedy by self-consciously romping through its melodramatic silliness……The play’s opening scene tells the tale of Aegeon’s loss of two twins in a storm.....When two sets of estranged identical names emerge on to the stage, they are a similarly odd mix of parts”