Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Shakespeare reviews West Side Story

Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

In Competition No. 3287, you were invited to supply a review of a film, novel, poem or play in the style of a writer for whom the theme might be deemed an appropriate choice. Thanks to Philip Stevens for suggesting this terrific challenge, which attracted a sizeable and stellar entry. Honourable mentions to Moray McGowan’s Kafka on The Very Hungry Caterpillar (‘There is a story here, but it needs something more radical, perhaps even wildly implausible, to make it more realistic.’), Chris O’Carroll’s T.S. Eliot on James and the Giant Peach and Russell Chamberlain’s Jeremy Clarkson on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In an especially hotly contested week, the winners below snaffle £25 apiece.

Yestreen I was allowed back to the earth,
And in a darkened room, upon a screen,
Were moving coloured pictures of a play
About two warring families! ’Twas mine,
A copy, right, but still they had the right,
Since I am centuries past copyright.
We are translated to th’Americas,
And their new Juliet is quite mature.
Mine was not yet fourteen, a fact for which
I oft have suffered censure – but I had
To cast a boy with an unbroken voice,
But songs! Maria! There’s a place for us!
Tonight, tonight! No tedious monologues!
I’faith, I lived too soon! The film’s the thing!
I wish I’d let my star-crossed lovers sing!













Brian Murdoch/Shakespeare: West Side Story

I’ve been asked to put the Wooster pen to paper and comment on this play by a chap called Orton. What the Butler Saw. Dashed misleading, if you ask me. In spite of the promise in the title, there’s no mention of any fine fellow of the Jeeves variety. Seems we’re in a clinic, they’re all off their rocker and half of them haven’t got any clothes on. The psychiatrist chappie seems a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. (‘Precisely the ungulate I had in mind,’ said Jeeves.)

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