posted on 29 Oct 2020

Rock Bottom : A midsummer nightmare  by Ross Montgomery, illustrated by Mark Beech

This rollicking comic story not only made me chuckle, it also whisked me back to my own school days when I very briefly ‘trod the boards’ by playing Bottom in the play-within-the-play that is the slapstick comedy interlude of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Remarkably, at the heart of this new production from the Barrington Stoke stable, that very same drama of Pyramus and Thisbe provides the backdrop to some pretty raucous fun.

Nick is besotted with Jessie but Jessie is keen on Blake. Naturally Nick can’t stand Blake. And also naturally enough he’d do pretty much anything to get into Jessie’s good books. And, he’s had an idea: perhaps he can get Jessie to notice him by entering the auditions for the school play and getting cast as the romantic lead alongside his love.

Things start to take a turn for the worst when he discovers that not only is he not going to get his wish to be the romantic leading man but Blake is. And, just to rub salt in the wounds, Nick finds that he and his friends have been cast as Bottom and the other rude mechanics that will provide the slapstick farce. How could Jessie ever see him in a new light when he has to publically humiliate himself?

And this is where Nick’s self-obsessed dark side takes a hand in the proceedings and, with the help of Robyn, the naughtiest girl in the school who loves to create mayhem for mayhem’s sake, things begin to spiral out of control. Nick is determined to steal back the leading man role but everything goes wrong with his dastardly plan and soon events get out of control.

I’m not going to give away what happens in this laugh-out-loud series of mishaps but it might put you off sitting in the front row of the next school play you go to.

In defence of Nick, by the end of the story he’s come back to his senses and discovered that apologising for your unpardonable behaviour makes you feel better even if it doesn’t always find you forgiveness.

Mark Beech’s anarchic black and white drawings are perfect for the story and recall the sort of role Quentin Blake’s drawings play in Roald Dahl novels. I especially like the design of the front cover that should give you a pretty good feel for the atmosphere of the book you’re about to be plunged into.

It seems that this is the first of a series from Ross Montgomery that will take their inspiration from Shakespeare plays – I’m already looking forward to Shipwrecked which takes its inspiration from The Tempest.

Terry Potter

October 2020