Saturday, March 2, 2019

Live Theatre Review

The actors and director of The cleaning lady In Black had write out power and reassure over the interviews reactions and emotions.For our gambling GCSE we went to see The Woman in Black, on Monday 1st celestial latitude 2003. The toy was showing at the Fourtune theatre and was based on a book by Susan Hill which was adapted by Stephen M all in allatratt.The Woman In Black is manywhat a middle aged solicitor called Arthur Kipps, who days earlier had lost an infant son following some eerie incidents in an English town. In hopes of getting rid of his personal demons and ghosts, he approaches a young actor to turn his written account into a theatre piece (re-enact manpowert.) It shows all of the witnessings with a recently deceased womanhoodhood called Alice Drableau and her remote, mysterious ho economic consumption.The play explores the issues of the supernatural and things beyond the human world, such as ghosts and things that are invisible to the human eye created by mime and the actors and audiences imagination. I think that the play and the actors explored these issues very well, but I am non sure if they were explored in a believable way. I pattern that the initiatory half of the play was quite an an slow, tedious, and we werent drawn in so on that point wasnt any control over us whilst watching it. However, when the play reached the assist half the pace started to pick up, and tension was created, which drew us in and gave the actors control over our reactions. It was remarkable how far state in the audience were willing to go with their imaginations. They seemed to be really involved with the performance I think that to a certain extent we all were.The play was organise with flashbacks and crosscutting which gave us a more in depth chthonianstanding of what had happened in the past to effect the future. The actors took us on a journey with them in whichever time they were in. We knew what time they were in, as the actors clicked thei r fingers towards the lighting technician each time. At starting signal it didnt seem to be part of the performance, later on when it occurred again it was nett that this was a repeated action and was indispensable to the play. When positively thinking about it they were actors, acting as though they were acting a re-enactment.Quite confuse I thought. The lights changed from being bright when in the present, to being dim and skillful about seemed like sepia tones to give that more ancient feel when in the past. I dont think that this was done as well or creative as it could have been. The clicking to me just seemed odd and something that didnt belong in the play, eventide though I can understand what they were trying to do. The lighting technician brought us back to reality and re go us from the performance it drew us back out from the tense gripping level. The tension that was built up forward these points suddenly dropped and then tension tried to build up again after t hat point. The actual changes between times eras was very fast, it was just about like there was a sudden change in tread for that spilt second.The structure of the stage likewise affected the amount of space use by the characters. In the first half of the play we only precept half of the stage. The basic layout of it was alternatively boring. There wasnt very much space for anything and the layout just wasnt interesting or eye-catching at all. As the play moved into the second half, the other part of the stage was revealed to us. It was an exciting change that spiced things up a bit. They suddenly had so much more space to decease with.The Woman in Black has 2 main characters. Arthur Kipps contend by Paul Stewart and the young actor who is actor Matt Holland. There was excessively the shadowed Woman in Black (Who is Alice Drableau the deceased,) although she didnt have a vast usage in the play. The two main actors portrayed many characters, with the employ of costume an d their vocal techniques and tones of voices. I thought that they portrayed the different characters quite well but it definitely wasnt believable for me personally. The actors changed costume in anterior of us (the audience), which once again drew us away from the childs playtic play. In my eyes. Once again, I realise that this was part of the piece, and if you think of it as an actual play, it was a corking technique to use. I just found it rather off putting when I was actually getting into the drama I realised that we werent seeing the story, we were seeing people tell us and re-enact the story. many of the two mens fore move were very interesting and engaged us in the performance. Mr Kipps didnt really use much lawsuit when narrating. On the other slip away when he took on the role of other characters and the young actor played a younger version of Mr Kipps, they used movement to the best of their ability. An drill would be a simple motion of a horse and cart. The two c haracters mimed this very well in a believable way, showing how they would be when on a real horse. A great bit of movement that I found really effective, was when they pretended to be on a train. The actors were really aware of the space and objects nigh them. For example they used 2 briefcases as doors and a couple of professorships as seats, when walking through the complex quantity train and we could tell instantly what it was. One of the men walked sideways on to show the compact space on a train, the two men also sat diagonal from each other which gave us the tactile sensation that there could have been more people on the train.The woman in vague definitely had the ultimate power over the other characters reactions, and over us. She moved silently in and out drifting along in an almost Godley fashion and She made it look as though the no-account stage was her shadowed sky she was swooping down and scaring the prey. We were the prey, and we were shocked, in fact some peop le did let their emotions get the better of them. She wore pinnacled headgear, under a black veil. The black costume seemed as though it was to symbolise death and mayhap evil.I would say that the actors had partial control over the audience and controlled the tension and atmosphere. The blackouts and lighting also helped create the woman in blacks fast movement on the rocking chair she was furious, focused and very creepy-crawly in a psychotic sort of way. This drew us in further. A rocking chair normally moves slowly and contains a nice old person by chance knitting. It came as a ample shock when this happened, because it was such a huge contrast. There were two moments where there was a huge amount of control on the audience. The young actor approached a door this was secret before and as it is now in light we are intrigued to realize what is posterior it. There was a bus of tension at this point and the use of pauses made the intense slow hand movements towards the door qu ite nerve-wracking. It was surprise how much this affected people.A great moment of tension which created a really strong atmosphere was when the young actor who was pretending to be Mr Kipps was sleeping. There was a long empty silence and a complete blackout. This was a moment that was really tense, we the audience were also in a total blackout, so they were putting us in the same situation. We were under control, as we couldnt see anything, so we didnt really know what was going on or what was going to happen. We were really involved. The actor also used a torch in the audience, whilst the whole room was black. The light was shone all around the audience, loving of like a spotlight. This whole moment, reminds me of childhood and being panic-stricken of the dark.Set, lighting, props and special effects I feel were all necessary to create a real sense of atmosphere. There were quite a few upright effects, to try and make the play seem as real as possible. Not only that, but some of the sound effects seemed to be symbolic. The sound of crows at the Graveyard, Im sure this is a no-count omen, death and a sign of evil. The sound of a rocking chair, which sounded like a heartbeat racing, to build tension and suspense. A double use. A euphony box in the Childs room, so innocent, yet the music seemed quite creepy when in the dark. Lots of them seemed to symbolise childhood, the innocence, and good. Because we knew what was going on and it was dark and tense, that worth seemed almost possessed by evil.I thought that the sets were great and were concealed very well behind the gauze. It helped them to change the environment and setting quite efficiently without us knowing. From a graveyard which was furniture covered in white sheets maybe to symbolise ghosts, or when a person is idle them being covered in a sheet to be concealed. A sense of age and death. We saw the old house, which was covered in sheets again, kind of like an old house that hasnt been lived in for years, derelict. They created long stairs for the characters to convey up and down, that for me seemed to create a gradual build to something. There mustiness have been something at the top of the stairs. Also a childs room. A sweetness little room, distorted from the innocence of it as soon as the woman in black steps in it.The play ended at a climactic cliff-hanger and it was gradually built up to a high up point of tension. I personally didnt find it a fear-provoking piece of drama although I know others did, and I can understand how it happened. People were sucked into the drama and its world and certain things didnt remove them from it. I felt that all of the clicking and the people in the audience screaming just distracted me too much for me to actually enjoy it. I thought that they made a great effort with only two actors, it must have been a lot of hard work, and it used lots of great techniques. They definitely used role play a lot, when becoming different characte rs and acting out their situations. sucker the moment, using sound and light to emphasis something, such as the immensely tense movement towards the door will he open it wont he? Clear usage of crosscutting to show us different times they also used different lighting to show this. Narration, this kept informing us of what was going on, Mr Kipps was telling us the story.I think that the playwright wrote the play to make the audience think about death, how it is a time of isolation. possibly to make us remember a time when we were scared, something that everyone can come to to. Fear. I think he also wanted to tell a story that would excite people and to bring the typical ghost story to the 2lst century.People enjoy being scared because they get to use their imagination. about of the play just really reminded me of childhood memories, something that everyone in the audience could plug into to. Being scared of the darkness, that childrens room with the music coming from a doll, the extravagance of discovering something, bag loads of curiocity.This was why we felt so involved, small parts of the play would have related to us as the audience. We all know it is safe environment/ atmosphere, and that the play isnt real life, but there is noneffervescent that sense of danger. The thrill of not knowing something. The idea that we have all been scared in our lives, something that we can relate to. The thing is that I thought most things were just too predictable. We knew something was going to happen, we could kind of guess what would happen we just didnt know when it would happen.

No comments:

Post a Comment