Much Ado About Nothing

The other day the English department at school ran a trip to the Globe theatre for Yr 9 students to see 'Much Ado About Nothing'.  Nathan, the Head of English, had put a sign up in the staffroom asking for staff to come and help out, and as I was free in the lessons they were going in, I said I would help.  I mean, free trip to the Globe, see some good Shakespeare.... ok, I'd have to do a bit of work, looking after the munchkins, but it shouldn't be so bad.

You'd think.  First of all, and I did know this, but forgot - it was a school's matinee.  For a Shakespearean play that many London schools are doing as their set work for the end of Yr 9 SATs exams.  This meant that the whole place was absolutely packed with schoolchildren.  But not just any schoolchildren, no - these are children who don't have any clue, not a single one, on how to behave at the theatre.  And to cap it all off, their teachers were complete and utter dipsticks, clearly incapable of shutting a few kids up and so on, and clearly with no level of common sense, as I will explain later.

We got there and queued outside - all 150 of us - when suddenly up rocks this all girls Muslim school, in red uniforms and red headscarves, and they all proceed (even the dopey teachers) to push in ahead of us for no apparent reason.  Just barging on through, no common courtesy at all.  They were followed by another school, this time young boys, who did exactly the same.  Now it could've been that there was a specific entry time for each school, but I doubt it.  I have a feeling that they just thought they could barge past, as we were still faffing around with trying to hand out tickets.

Which brings me to the next point.  We were lucky, we did have seats, but they were so high up and right around to the side that you could hardly see anything.  Couple that with the fact that they don't use microphones at the Globe, and this is compounded by the hundreds of schoolchildren who don't understand the play, won't shut up for the performance and sit there eating packets of chips loudly and heckling at every available opportunity, and you can begin to have a glimpse of my afternoon.

I have absolutely no idea what the play is about.  Obviously 'nothing', that's a given from the title.  I spent the whole time going around various groups of our kids and getting them to shut up.  This was no mean feat, I tell you - because of where our seats were, the girls had a pretty good vantage point to check out everyone else below, including all the boys from the other schools!  You put a bunch of hyperactive, oversexed teenage girls on a balcony looking down at pimply teenage boys and they all go weak at the knees and start hyperventiliating.  Literally, one girl did that.  You'd've thought they'd never seen a boy before in their lives!  And talk about Much Ado About Nothing...  we had to practically form a human baricade when the play finally finished, as 150 girls en masse try to practically mug this boy they'd (get this) ALL BEEN LOOKING AT during the play.

I tell you, I was just relieved when it was all over and we got back to school...