CAMPION College walked away winners of the inaugural Shakespeare Schools’ Championship held at the Little Theatre in St Andrew on Saturday evening.

The Corporate Area school, with its interpretation of Macbeth, beat the combined cast from St Hugh’s High and Kingston College, which performed The Merchant of Venice.

An elated director, Damion Radcliffe, told the Jamaica Observer that he was both humbled and excited by the victory, which will see his cast jetting off to London in March of next year to participate in the activities surrounding the 400th anniversary of the death of playwright William Shakespeare.

This year’s festival was sponsored by local financial institution Jamaica National.

For Radcliffe, the road to the finals of the competition was a difficult one.

“I love Macbeth and that is why I chose it for my students. Once I had the idea for the staging, the most difficult part was getting the student actors to understand the text. This took about three weeks of going through each page, line by line, and explaining what was happening.”

One of the challenges of the championship was that the 30-minute plays had to be set in a Jamaican context while maintaining and staying true to the Shakespearean language.

Radcliffe set his Macbeth in a Jamaican yard complete with zinc fence and standpipe. Shakespeare’s three witches became three dancehall divas complete with coloured wigs, who ‘bubbled’ to a pulsating dancehall music soundtrack.

“Despite all the research and supporting material, the actors still found it boring until I made the witches dance… that’s when it all came together for them. The challenge here was making it dancehall, but not ‘rae’, so there had to be that strong element of control. But once it all started to happen, it was like magic,” Radcliffe further explained.

The cast from Campion demonstrated an understanding of the material and this came across in their interpretation and ultimate delivery of the work. The three witches, played by Rashai Graham, AnnaKay Hudson and Jheanelle Saunders, truly brought their characters to life. The solid, dramatic work of Demitri Grant as Macbeth and Christina Emanuel as Lady Macbeth was indeed commendable. Both displayed a sensibility in handling the material which made one forget they are teens.

The runners-up should not feel defeated. The combined cast from Kingston College and St Hugh’s High brought elements of Jamaican culture to bear on The Merchant of Venice. Rastafari and Jonkannu were front and centre. In a brilliant spin on the original text, the Jewish money-lender Shylock became a turban-wearing Rasta, which worked well with Shakespeare’s religious insults in the text.

Young Kevaughn Smith, who played Shylock, was one of the standouts of this cast, along with leading lady Danielle Insang who played Portia. Their stage presence and comfort with the characters was evident and made for a good watch.

Conceptualiser of the championship, Dr Tony Sewell, was pleased with the standard of work put in by the drama teachers, mentors and students, which made for what he noted was a “fantastic championship”, and added that he was looking for the support for the event to continue in the future.