“What we said in entering [the competition] was whatever we did, we were prepared to take risks. I was staggered by how the boys adapted.”One of the cast, Rob Cox, 17, said that playing a concubine was certainly challenging, but had been very interesting “It’s nothing like we’ve tried before. They respond to necessity by consuming the emperor’s body.Mr Lonsdale said that there were a few giggles in early rehearsals, but they were quickly overcome “It’s been a wonderful learning experience,” he said. Nearly 150 youth theatre companies chose one of them to perform and one production of each has been selected for the showcase at the National on South Bank in July.Mr Lonsdale, Sandbach’s deputy head, originally shied away from Bryony Lavery’s play More Light because it was for an all-women cast. But as he perused the scripts he had to choose from, he realised it would not be as inappropriate as he first thought.Adopting the distinctive style of the Peking Opera, which is performed by men only, the boys were soon won over to the story of women forced to adapt to their tomb home. Yet the result has been a roaring success which has won the school a place on stage at the National Theatre in London in a competition backed by British Telecom to the tune of pounds 400,000.
A dozen playwrights, including Wole Soyinka and Liz Lochhead, were commissioned to write new works specially for young people.

The play More Light tells the story of 16 women immured alive with the body of their deceased emperor. So there were a few gasps of surprise when John Lonsdale told his cast of 25 at Sandbach Boys Comprehensive that they were going to perform it – with not a female in sight. In a letter to selected Tory MPs, Sir Bryan warned that choosing a right-wing Euro-sceptic as leader would damage the party’s relations with the business community and risk a long stay in opposition.With Mr Clarke being seen as the Tory version of Denis Healey, Labour’s former Chancellor, Sir Bryan cautioned Tory MPs against taking the “Michael Foot option” of abandoning the centre ground, as Labour had done after its defeat in 1979.The problem with such endorsements is that Sir Bryan has no vote, and limited influence on MPs who will form their own judgements.But for those wanting a mix of Mr Clarke’s left-wing background and a dash of Euro-scepticism, Stephen Dorrell yesterday offered the prospect of outright opposition to British membership of the European single currency, with the possibility of a withdrawal of the party whip from rebels who broke party ranks to support membership.. If he cannot then pick up support from other challengers for the leadership, winning the necessary 83-vote majority of the MPs who are entitled to vote, MPs will quickly begin to switch to other candidates, such as William Hague or the dark-horse contender, Peter Lilley.Mr Clarke’s campaign was yesterday boosted by the public endorsement of Sir Bryan Nicholson, former president of the Confederation of British Industry. He has the stature, the experience, and the common touch and those are a pretty formidable set of combinations,” Sir Leon said.It also emerged yesterday that Mr Clarke might yet look forward to an endorsement by Michael Heseltine, though the open support of John Major is more unlikely.But many Conservative MPs still doubt whether Mr Clarke can come through to win. Like John MacGregor, contender in last week’s election for the backbench 1922 Committee chairmanship, Mr Clarke is expected to be ahead on the first ballot – but with insufficient votes to establish a momentum for further rounds.

I don’t think he should be leader.”But Sir Leon Brittan, vice-president of the European Commission and a former Tory cabinet minister, told the same programme: “There’s not the slightest evidence, and it’s untrue, that Ken Clarke lost the election for the Conservatives.”He said: “If during that election we’d focused entirely on the economy, we’d have done very much better than we did focusing on the whole question of Europe.”Mr Clarke, he said, had done a tremendous job as Chancellor and it was “farcical” to suggest, as Lord Parkinson had done, that he would be too old to be prime minister in five years’ time, when he would be 61.”He has got tremendous flexibility of approach. However, the practice’s patterns of prescribing are similar to those of other surgeries.No one from the practice was available for comment.. The Conservatives yesterday continued their bickering over the future direction of the party, with Kenneth Clarke at the centre of a debate over Europe. Lord Parkinson, the Thatch-erite former chairman of the party, told GMTV’s Sunday programme that Mr Clarke had “offended a broad swath of the party by his rather cavalier attitude to people whose views don’t agree with his, particularly on the subject of Europe.
“And there is a feeling that he held the last government to ransom – a feeling that is widely held, and that may at the end of the day count against him.

It believes this notional rent should be taken into account in the budgeting of the development.Although this has not been done before, the authority notes that “had there been profit elements in past schemes it is unlikely that they would have been on the scale of this particular development”.The money was saved from the drugs budget over four years. One of Avon’s suggestions is that the partners should provide more of the funding for the development from their own resources.The authority estimates that if the practice were to rent its premises, it would cost in the region of pounds 39,000. During 1994- 95, the Audit Commission, the public spending watchdog, noted pounds 95m of such “savings”.Mr Kline said that the Government regarded health visitors as key workers in areas such as child protection and working with the elderly: “They are the corner-stone of preventative health care.”Yet instead of being spent on such posts, money was going on buildings which, in effect, acted as a deferred pension for the GPs.A spokeswoman for Avon Health Authority said that the authority had a duty to ensure that money was being spent properly and had asked the doctors to look again at their plans. Roger Kline, MSF national secretary (health), said: “Where has this money come from? Was the practice over- funded or is it because they have saved on patient services?”Mr Kline said that the issue was not just a local one because the amount of money in fund-holder savings was virtually equal to the pounds 100m sum the Government has vowed to find through cutting bureaucracy. The case has caused particular concern because of a recent attempt by the practice to cut the number of its health visitors from two to one.
The authority has told Dr Roger Rolls and his partners in Bath to suspend plans for a satellite practice in nearby Bathampton, and wants further talks.The authority had given earlier permission for a smaller pounds 280,000 development but was surprised to discover that the plans had been expanded, without permission, to what it described as a “very substantial” pounds 513,000 scheme.In agenda papers, John Watson, the authority’s development director, reported the audit sub-committee’s view that the practice should not make a profit out of the development.”It is implicit within fundholding that the scheme should not work in such a way as to provide those participating with a personal profit,” he said.The Manufacturing Science and Finance union (MSF) said that the proposal raised serious questions about the amount of National Health Service money now held, unused, by fund-holders. A GP fund-holding practice has saved more than pounds 500,000 from its drugs budget and wants to use it to develop a new surgery. But Avon Health Authority has blocked the plan, saying that it would create a “substantial profit to the practice” because of the GPs’ ownership of the equity of the premises.