Swipe at Senseless War

Published on isbi School News dated Monday 7th of January 2013

A searing attack on the senseless slaughter of the First World War spiced with some of the catchiest songs of the era has been staged at Wisbech Grammar School.

Almost 50 years since its stunning first performance by Theatre Workshop in 1963, Oh what a lovely war reminded an audience totalling 560 people during the three-night run of the brutality of a conflict that cost the lives of ten million people.

The play is a theatrical chronicle of the horrors of the war told through songs and documents of the period, and in the half century that has elapsed since it was first staged it has gone on to become a classic of the modern theatre.

A cast of 45 pupils aged from 12 to 18 had been rehearsing after school every day and on Sundays for three months and Edwardian delicacies prepared by head of food and nutrition Mrs Alison Sloan and her talented team were served during the interval.

School play director Miss Alison Clayton, who was staging her 11th major production at the school in a row, said: 'I performed in a production of the play when I was 16 and I have never forgotten it. It moves the cast as well as the audience.'