Drama "Off the Rails"
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A Review of The Sixth Form Play: ‘Off the Rails’
The A2 drama students were given ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ as a stimulus to create their own piece of drama. They could base their play on it as much or as little as they liked. Amy and Olivia explored what would happen after the stimulus play had finished, and the result was ‘Off the Rails’.
Olivia played Blanche when she was a teenager in a flashback full of colourful dresses and beads, then we saw the disturbing transition from that world to an austere mental institute for women. The A2 students showed how Blanche was driven mad by the ‘treatment’, despite the psychiatrists giving her the best medical attention they could, thinking it would help. As Blanche became more and more distressed, she finally snapped, the lighting changed and we plunged into an abstract fantasy world where she could escape briefly from reality.
Amy played Stella, who had to decide between caring for her sister Blanche and letting the mental institute take her so that she could devote all her energy to her own new life, her husband Stanley and their baby son. The confrontation scene between Stella and Stanley was terrifying, as Stella’s love for her sister was overruled by her brutish husband’s manipulation.
Special congratulations to Sophie Dix-Perkin who is one of the year seven drama enthusiasts. She played young Stella in the flashback. Her performance stood out because she communicated the character’s innocence to the audience, which made the rest of the play so heartbreaking when we saw what happened to the character later. Well done on your first performance at Wally!
Everyone involved in the production gave a hauntingly believable performance and adapted it to our new drama studio Elwes very well, especially considering that nobody has staged a production in there before.
Emma Pearce, UV
  
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