The Prince and the Pauper

Andrew Beattie's latest play is an adaptation of Mark Twain's famous novel. Twain wrote the book in 1881 and it is such a familiar story. Two boys decide to change places after a ‘chance encounter offers them an opportunity to escape their fates for the day and see how the other half lives, they eagerly swap clothes and change places in each other's lives.’

Beattie has based his play on the original novel but has made it accessible to youth actors and audiences alike by making the roles adaptable to varying cast sizes. What is useful at the front of the play text is not only a list of characters, but Beattie also tells you how you can adapt the number of roles in the text, moving from a core cast size of 14, where parts are doubled up, to the ‘theoretical possibility’ of having a cast of over 80.

You can also change the age and gender of many of the characters, meaning that it's really accommodating to any school setting. YouthPLAYS specialises in publishing work that is aimed at young actors, or adult actors performing to youth audiences, so this play is perfect for that.

I think that Beattie's adaptation would work well for a young cast, specifically upper primary school age, as it's full of action and thwarted attempts at resolution, and would appeal to adventurous young minds who might wonder what it would be like to swap places with a Prince for a day.

I think it's a shame that Beattie didn't take the opportunity of updating the story. I know it's an historical drama, but it would have been more interesting to see a similar story in a new setting. A modernised version would have been much more appealing in my opinion, rather than a traditional adaptation that is simply a condensed version of the novel. I feel like that's something most drama teachers could do themselves, so this doesn't offer anything particularly new, but I appreciate that it's straightforward to stage and casting is extremely flexible, which is appealing.

All in all, it's a fun, familiar, historical adaptation, but not hugely innovative.