Shatila, The play and my opinion on it

On the 5th of April, part of Key Stage 4 and 6th Form went to the Saville Exchange to see the production of Croak, The King and A change in the weather. Performed by the children of Shatila, the story centers around a corrupt king who has never left his palace and who always gets what he wants. The story starts off with the king and his queen in the throne room when the king demands his dinner. The servants cannot deliver his food because of a sudden snowstorm that has hit the land. The king, infuriated by this, sends his soldiers to get rid of the snow, but they fail in the end, and so his assistant, Croak, sends in a girl who has a connection with the spirits of the weather. The girl decides to help the king, but only if the king gives her a reward. The king just says yes and waves her off. The girl, with the help of the spirits, gets rid of the snow (in the form of a dance) and asks for her reward. The king denies this accusation and sends her off. This scenario plays out another two times, with fog and ice (with ice, instead of him not getting his dinner, it’s him not having his royal bath) happening respectively, and after the third time, Croak tells the king to imprison the girl and execute her. The king agrees and sends her to the dungeon to be executed the next day. During the night, the Queen goes down to the dungeon and frees the girl, telling her to escape. She does and decides to take her revenge by sending the three weathers mentioned above to happen all in a single night. The people awake in a panic and the king is angered by the fact that he cannot get his food and have his bath. He decides to take Croak and they go out to get rid of the weather all by themselves. The story ends with them failing but both alive and well (note: the ending of the play differs from the ending of the book with the same name). After the play had finished, the children of Shatila changed into their native costume and did a dance from their home country played to the beat of one of their native song. All in all, it was a relatively good play, though a bit repetitive, but the dance afterwards was my favourite bit, probably because it had so much feeling and emotion in it. The transition was quite good as it was not jumping from scene to scene all the time. The props used were very well thought up as, for the weather, instead of confetti or a fog machine; they used a sheet (snow), a net (fog) and cling-film (ice), for the food instead of plastic food; they used a painting, of the food, on a board of wood, a bit different than usual but it worked. Costumes and choreography were designed and planned out with expert designing and careful preparation, as the designs of the costumes represented the actual character they were playing and the dance used in the “spirits getting rid of the weather scenes” were quite dramatic. Again, through it all, a good play, if repetitive, but a good play none the less; even though to me personally, the dance afterwards was a bit better then the play itself.