TACKLING Shakespeare is a challenge to even the most seasoned of actors, so hats off to four Dorset schools who took part in this year’s Shakespeare Schools Festival.

The festival is a national institution where schools take the play of their choice and condense it into a 30-minute performance.

We were treated to Branksome Heath Middle School performing Macbeth, Parkstone Grammar with King Lear, Dorchester’s Sunninghill School doing The Tempest and the Victoria Education Centre with Romeo and Juliet.

The diminutive cast of Macbeth was full of enthusiasm and had mastered the wordy script with gusto.

Parkstone Grammar’s actors were the eldest of the night and they gave a powerful, elegant and – where it called for it – brilliantly insane and duplicitous rendition of Lear set in a world of mobile phones and Underground trains.

Sunninghill had worked for weeks on their Tempest. They spoke clearly, missing none of the play’s cleverly crafted blend of comedy, action and magic.

But in a night of stars, some shone brighter. The Victoria Education Centre in Poole is for youngsters with special needs and the nine students performing Romeo and Juliet did so with a power and touching sensitivity that brought the audience to its feet, with Hugo Lucas-Rowe and Lauren Taylor spellbinding.

At a time when funding for the arts is being slashed, the festival – with its charitable status – is one area that deserves every penny it gets.