Description

The Highwayman Assembly or Class Play

The Highwayman Assembly is a ‘two versions in one’ script, featuring the flamboyant Adam Ant as the first highwayman to appear (Adam) and Kate Bush as the first Bess (Kate) alongside the two original characters, Highwayman and Bess.

Aslo available: The smuggler’s song.

Cast of 30 – easily adaptable up or down. Duration: 10 – 15 minutes reading time. This does not include music.

The Highwayman Assembly Sample Text:

(Enter 3 redcoats)

Reader 7:        ‘A red-coat troop came marching’

Redcoats:        (Together) Marching! Marching!

Reader 7:        ‘King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door’

Kate:                Oops! (Pointing to Narrator) I don’t think he saw that coming!

(To Adam) Best let them continue this melancholy tale. I don’t think we want to be around at the end!

(Exit Adam and Kate)

Narrator:         They were right! I didn’t see that coming! Nor did the landlord and his lovely daughter. Still, if they’re King George’s men, I’m sure they’ll act like gentlemen.

(3 redcoats mime drinking action to landlord, who rushes off, returning with 3 large flasks of beer, which redcoats grab and down in one)

Reader 8:        ‘They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.’

(3 redcoats grab Bess and tie her to the bed)

Reader 9:        ‘But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.’

Reader 10:      ‘Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!’

Reader 11:      ‘There was death at every window;

And hell at one dark window;’

Reader 12:      ‘For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.’

Narrator:         (Exploding) But that’s terrible! And King’s men, at that!

Landlord:         Oh you haven’t heard the half of it!

Narrator:         There’s worse?

Landlord:         Much worse!

Also available: Sherlock Holmes and the Great Mysteries of the World Assembly