Dunedin serves up, if not a tempest, certainly a downpour on the two penultimate days that the students participating in this year’s SCGNZ Schools Production have of their week-long residential course in the city. At almost the last minute the venue for the Friday evening performance is switched from the Denise Walsh Auditorium at Logan Park High School to the Refectory of the St Hilda’s Collegiate School hostel, Tolcarne, where the students have been staying. The dining tables are pushed back and a makeshift performance space created in front of three rows of tutors, and the friends and supporters who have braved the elements and the civil defence warnings and made it in. In scenic and technology terms, this is going to be a ‘poor theatre’ performance with a bare floor area simply illuminated by the in-built overhead fluorescent tubes.

The production in fact features three Shakespearian works, each compressed to approximately 45 minutes. First up is Much Ado About Nothing, directed by an alumnus of the SCGNZ programme, Ben Ashby. It is clear that the youthful performers of Beatrice and Benedick understand that what you declare about your feelings for another may not, in fact, be the true story. Likewise, they know that what others say about someone in a relationship can harm the relationship, even if what is said is not true, as in the case of Claudio and Hero.

The second work is Macbeth, directed by Jessica Sutherland-Latton, who was prevented by weather-induced landslips from being present at the performance. Again, the students give a clear account of the titular figure’s embrace of the illegitimate possibility, promoted by the witches and his wife, that he might become king of Scotland and the psychotic consequences of the murderous actions he embarks on to bring this short-lived goal about.

After an interval, The Tempest makes up the entire second half. The director for this piece is Blaise Barham who directed a full production of the play for his own fringe theatre company in the city earlier in the year. Here he makes an effective re-use of at least one staging element employed in that production, with long strips of cloth representing the ocean waves. There are more plot threads in this play than in the others, making effective compression of it more difficult. Where the performers had the measure of the verbal sparring in the wit-duels of the first play, the clowning elements here are more demanding but a sympathetic audience still appreciated the young players’ efforts with them.

Where the first two pieces conclude with dances for their companies, up beat in the first case, more formal and stately in the second, The Tempest, despite its textual masque components, does not. Instead, all the course participants return to the stage to sing two songs, then present a waiata and a haka. These are impressively delivered, again particularly so in light of the short rehearsal period.

The venue had the benefit of a greater actor-audience intimacy than might have been achieved in a larger auditorium. Acoustics may also have been assisted by the relatively low roof. Consequently, I find there is no issue with audibility, even on the occasions when performers are addressing others side-on. The diction is clear and the verse is spoken well, with both meaning and intention successfully conveyed.

Two thirds of the performers are women, so inevitably some roles have their gender re-assigned (Donna Pedra, Prospera) or the directors employ gender-blind casting. To give all 48 participants from a wide range of schools throughout the country their chance, there are often multiple performers in the same role, sometimes sequentially (the Macbethpresentation in particular having some effective transitions from one performer to the next), sometimes simultaneously (Caliban being played by dual performers captures well the monstrous aspect of the character). Simple costume identifiers make it clear who has taken up the roles next.

Given that the performers often only got to offer snatches of a full characterization I am not going to single any out. I acknowledge immediately the range of performance skills that they all demonstrated (their dancing, combat and haka all vastly superior to mine) and the complete focus and commitment that were evident on stage throughout. To have developed the three presentations to the performance level that was achieved with just a week’s rehearsal speaks volumes for the talent level and discipline of all the participants.

The performances are accompanied on piano and tabor by Student Composer Jesse Pollard-Simmiss. When acoustic and electronic bass guitars join the mix on occasion in the first piece, the balance between instruments and voice tends to favour the band (which may not have been an issue in a larger performance space) but the quieter underscoring in Macbeth and The Tempest by Pollard-Simmiss alone proves very effective.

Performers in the first two pieces are largely costumed by Student Costumier Nicole Sue in contemporary clothing (with tartan flashes in the Macbeth) but more elaborate design is employed in The Tempest, with its humans in period costume and the Ariels suitably supernatural.

It is a great disappointment to learn that Otago University sponsorship of the event has come to an end and so, presumably, the SGCNZ’s use of Dunedin as a venue. For almost 90 years the city boasted the ‘World’s Oldest’ Shakespeare Club. Both the formerly resident professional companies (the Southern Theatre Trust and the Fortune) presented Shakespeare, as the Repertory Society did and the Globe still does. On campus, J V Trevor’s production of The Tempest for the Otago University Drama Society 70 years ago is still spoken of by those who saw it and the University’s Drama / Theatre Studies Department in the last four decades have also mounted a further five full productions of Shakespeare’s works, and sundry collage productions. In its quest to re-orient itself with a STEM focus, the University (and the nation) is overlooking the fact that STEM people are often found, if not in, then certainly in the audience for the musical and dramatic performing arts, so cutting the institution’s (and the nation’s) patronage of these art-forms can only be viewed as short-sighted. In the meantime, SCGNZ is engaged on the difficult task of looking for an alternative backer for its National Schools Shakespeare Productions. On the basis of this 2024 presentation, they are very worthy of support.

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