On Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 February 2015, the A2 Drama and Theatre Studentsperformed a truly memorable devised practical about London.

View More Photographs

The cast of seven worked intensely for many weeks alongside a student of
lighting design to devise this fast-paced, entertaining romp through the history
of our great capital city. They were working in the vaudeville style, popular
in the music halls of the nineteenth century, with comic songs, quick-fire
sketches, slapstick humour and plenty of audience interaction.

Inspired by West End hits such as The 39 Steps, The Reduced
Shakespeare Company’s Complete Wrks of Willm Shkspr (Abridged) and
Potted Sherlock, they were allotted just 35 minutes to tell the best bits
of the history of London – from the Roman invasion and battles with the Iceni
tribe, through grisly deaths at the Tower, tales of ghosts, plagues and fire,
to the modern tribulations of commuters on the Underground. They dramatized an
exploration of the vast array of secret tunnels under London, celebrated the
pluck – not to mention the incomprehensible slang – of cockney civilians during
the Blitz, and mourned the plight of Victorian orphans. There were quick-fire sketches
about everything from tourists to taxi drivers, Suffragettes to seedy nightlife.
The show culminated in a joyous medley of popular songs with cunningly
rewritten lyrics.

The relentless, breakneck speed of the piece required meticulously
choreographed sequences, and while the end result may have looked effortlessly
breezy, this was one of the most physically demanding challenges undertaken by
Drama students at Queenswood in recent years.