Darwin’s Dream
Royal Albert Hall
By Patrick and Richard Dawe
The performance was about the story of how Darwin discovered the theory of evolution. The music was written by Graham Treacher, who was inspired by a piece of music called the creation, which was composed by Haydn in 1799. Darwin’s dream covers everything from the Big Bang right up to today. Graham Treacher adapted the three main characters of Haydn’s piece into Joe (the fossil hunter), Doctor Evelyn (the scientist) and Darwin himself, firstly as a young explorer in the forests of Brazil and then later as an old man living in his house in Kent. There is a message in the dream that we all need to care for our world.
When he was twenty two Darwin set of on a world wide voyage on HMS Beagle to study wildlife. He collected lots of different samples from different countries of a whole range of creepy crawlies and mammals, on the journey back he was comparing the shells of tortoises and found out that all the shells were different, depending on the islands they came from. This started him wondering if all tortoises were the same to start with but had to evolve to survive. After lots more research he came to the conclusion that all life evolved from the first life form that stepped on earth.
We liked the play because it describes in a fun way how life started.
After we had seen the performance of Darwin’s Dream, we went to the Natural History museum and went to the earth gallery, which also shows how earth was formed and life started. We learnt loads.
