FOR many school children the challenge of performing one Shakespeare play would be huge.

But students at one Bournemouth school have taken it to a whole new level and rattled through 30 of the Bard’s works in just over an hour.

The Bournemouth Collegiate School Reduced Shakespeare Company took on the challenge on Wednesday, June 20 with performances as wide-ranging as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Julius Caesar. And they even managed the seemingly impossible feat of performing Hamlet in just three minutes, a play which usually takes at least three to four hours.

All the performers got into the spirit of the event with gruesome costumes and great enthusiasm.

And they were delighted with their 60-minute performance, which could have taken three solid days if the plays had been performed in the traditional way. The performance was one of a number of events planned at the independent school’s senior in College Road, Southbourne. The school also has a prep school in Upton, Poole.