Shakespeare 4 Kidz - S4K's The Tempest

Exiled 12 years earlier on a mystical Mediterranean island, Prospero has spent his time perfecting his magic art and planning revenge on his wicked brother and his followers who overthrew him. When a powerful sea-tempest shipwrecks his former adversaries, they are tricked and tormented by Prospero’s magic to hilarious effect.

Shakespeare 4 Kidz The Tempest is a mystical, magical, mysterious, musical romantic comedy of revenge, a father’s love for his daughter and the misuse of power. Shakespeare 4 Kidz blow up a storm creating “such stuff that dreams are made on” and making their version of the Bard’s final play UNMISSABLE.

"A mischievously irreverent and hugely enjoyable musical adaptation" South Wales Evening Post

“The entire text seemed simply to be relaxed, conversational, and modern. Ariel’s Full Fathom Five and Where the Bee Sucks and Stephano’s drunken songs - all faithfully lifted from the Folio text - seemed to have been written especially for the production, and fitted in perfectly alongside the songs written by the adaptors themselves.

“The result was that when whole passages of Shakespearean blank verse were introduced, usually as soliloquies, with the play’s pace slowing subtly to give them emphasis, they seemed astonishingly modern and accessible.”

Key Stage 3 students continue to find the Shakespeare 4 Kidz musical adaptation of The Tempest a perfect introduction to the story, themes, characters and relationships of Shakespeare’s final play.

Thomas Larque writing in Early Modern Literary Studies said this about the show: “The backbone of the production was effectively an abridgement and paraphrase of Shakespeare’s text into colloquial modern English, but this was combined with entirely new lines and songs, and peppered with phrases and longer passages of Shakespeare’s original unaltered blank verse and prose. The company showed such skill in integrating these three very different types of material that anybody who did not know Shakespeare’s play would have found it impossible to tell when or where the production slipped into and out of the Shakespearean original."

What they say about us:
S4K HAMLET: "I just wanted to let you know how much my eleven year old son and I enjoyed the production this evening. It was the first time at the theatre for my son, who showed an interest after visiting The Globe. He suffers from an attention disorder, and rarely have I seen him so rapt. I have certainly never heard him talk so enthusiastically about any form of entertainment. We look forwards to attending tomorrow afternoon for Hamlet. Thank you for enabling me to share something that I particularly enjoy with my son, on a level which is appropriate and useful to him." Parent, Norwich.

What they say about us:

S4K HAMLET: "I just wanted to let you know how much my eleven year old son and I enjoyed the production this evening. It was the first time at the theatre for my son, who showed an interest after visiting The Globe. He suffers from an attention disorder, and rarely have I seen him so rapt. I have certainly never heard him talk so enthusiastically about any form of entertainment. We look forwards to attending tomorrow afternoon for Hamlet. Thank you for enabling me to share something that I particularly enjoy with my son, on a level which is appropriate and useful to him." Parent, Norwich.