RICHMOND CE Primary School’s year 5 pupils opened this celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and death.

Good symbolism via physical theatre skills embraced the spirit of the Bard’s best known works, while linguistic updates such as “chill out” and a Dire Straits musical accompaniment showed the young people engaging in modern terms.

Directed by Ashleigh Barker, who also apologetically demonstrated her own acting talents while replacing an absent student, the Richmond School Drama Club students of Romeo and Juliet employed verbatim passages connected with narration.

In each section, different actors assumed the key roles, with Capulets and Montagues identifiable by red and blue sashes. The dramatic frame, in which the students clicked fingers, clapped and stamped feet to create the feeling of a storm brewing and subsiding, was particularly effective.

The two later performances began with an inspired Macbeth by the Georgian Theatre Royal Youth Theatre. Created in just two days, its backdrop featured the Wyrd Sisters in a text conversation, a YouTube piece to camera by Banquo and the making of the “double, double toil and trouble” speech into a skipping rhyme, all delightful touches against which Thomas Chandler and Miri Crawshaw gave moving performance as Macbeth and his Lady.

The final performance by Richmond School and Sixth Form showed the sophistication and intensity of an older cohort. Longer sections from soliloquies were juxtaposed with the use of mobile phones, "sexting", "selfies" and Snapchat embracing how Shakespearean characters might communicate in 2016.

Disturbing in parts, it captured the intensity and anguish of the universal human condition – as pertinent today as four centuries ago. This was an inspiring testimony to the power of community drama and the commitment of more than 80 local young performers.

Christina McIntyre