What happens when Mum and Dad tell you they are not getting along too well, so one is moving out for a while to see how things go? How do you cope with your Dad’s serial partners, or your Mum’s constant back-sniping? What happens when a parent simply disappears from a child’s life? Or, worse, when a parent dies?

These are the questions that Anne Fine’s play “Step by Wicked Step” addresses. Strong meat, you might think, for a cast of twenty-six Thirds and Lower Fourths. However, on June 23rd and 24th our young cast presented five interwoven stories with complete confidence and emotional engagement. Anne Fine’s montage of poignant stories, illustrates how children can find a way through, and learn to take support from their wider families and friends.

The piece was staged with a circle of seated children on stage all the time, moving in and out to take part in scenes, poems and comments. It demanded total concentration and disciplined timing, and I am enormously proud of the way the girls rose to the challenge. Special mention has to be made of the four central characters, all step children on a school trip, played by sensitivity, bravery and humour, by Charlotte-Rose Allan, Hero Coles, Jessica Flood and Lorna Sibson. I should also commend the performances of Trudie Brady, Rose McGowan, Iona Geidt and Luciana Rouse, who played a Victorian teenager, his mother, step father and sister in the story-within-the-story which the four central characters discover written in a diary, hidden in a secret room, adjoining their attic dormitory in the old house where their school party is staying. The emotional range and theatrical techniques displayed by the whole cast are testament to the girls’ hard work and sheer talent. Girls, you did a great job!