Complex sentence: A school play about the Pied Piper was in rehearsal before catastrophe hit, and, desperate to recapture some normalcy and to divert the children's attention from a reality too horrible to contemplate, the town decides to go on with the show.
Split into simpler sentences: A school play about the Pied Piper was in rehearsal before catastrophe hit. Desperate to recapture some normalcy and to divert the children's attention from a reality too horrible to contemplate, the town decides to go on with the show.