Spread the Love: The Pied Piper of Hamelin adapted by Mrs. Evelyn Merritt

This week we Spread the Love for The Pied Piper of Hamelin lovingly adapted by Mrs. Evelyn Merritt. Recorded live in a small hamlet (or a big theme park, you choose).

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Transcript

Welcome to this week’s Spread the Love. This week we are talking about The Pied Piper of Hamelin lovingly adapted by Mrs. Evelyn Merritt from the original poem by Robert Browning.

Hamelin has a huge rat problem. Rats in vats, rats on mats, in ladies hats – rats! And when the Pied Piper comes to town and promises to rid them of their rodents, Hamelin is overjoyed. Until, the town council tries to weasel out on the deal and learns the hard way, never cross the Pied Piper.

What I love about this is its theatricality. This is not a staid, static poetry reading. The characters are vivid and everyone is going to want to play the rats. Craig, what do you love about The Pied Piper?

I love the use of language in The Pied Piper. Mrs. Merritt has not comprised one iota. All of the text is from the original Robert Browning. So, here we have a play that’s meant for middle schoolers to perform and yes there are some big old twenty dollar words in it, but they add so much richness and depth to the text, they are totally worth the effort.

That’s it for Spread the Love. Bye bye!