Bill Naughton's Play "Spring and Port Wine"
How does the playwright, Bill Naughton, prepare the audience for the
first appearance for Rafe on the stage? What are the audience expected
to think about him? 07817966841 224 1970
In this coursework I will be focusing on a play called "Spring and
Port Wine". It was first performed in 1965 and is set about forty
years ago. I am going to comment on how social and historical things
have changed since then and how we as an audience are expected to
think of the character called Rafe before his first entry in the play.
At the start of the play in the stage directions we get a lot of
information about what Rafe is like. We find out that he looks after
his family by giving them a "comfortable, prosperous, working class
home". This shows that he cares about his family. We also find out
that he likes the house "spick and span" because in the stage
directions we see that "everything is polished and well cared for".
This gives us the idea of Rafe as being a perfectionist, and in those
days the neighbours used to notice and judge people by looking at how
clean their house was. We see that there is "nothing cheap or vulgar"
in the house which shows that he can meet the expenses of the family
and they are comfortably off. We learn that Rafe is certainly the man
of the house because when setting the table, Daisy is giving extra
attention to Rafe's place at the head table. The stage directions also
show us that money is a theme throughout the play.
The play opens with Daisy and Florence trying to get the housekeeping
account balanced. Right from the beginning we learn that Rafe is an
intelligent man, we know this because Daisy says to Florence "You've
got your fathers...
... middle of paper ...
... build a picture of Rafe in our
own mind. We also find out that money is an important theme all the
way through the play. All this facilitate us to get our own notion of
Rafe's characteristics.
After reading the opening of the play we understand that the play is
really about tensions in a family caused by a generation gap, we find
out that Rafe is a very complicated person; we see he controls his
family very well. We learn this by the manner in which he treats his
wife over housekeeping money and would not go down well today. However
his intentions are always laudable in that in that everything was done
for the sake of his family. The playwright Bill Naughton has cleverly
used different characters to describe him very well; the setting of
the play was set in a way that the audience would have a good image of
what Rafe is like before he enters the stage.
audience in his play. I will be analysing act one of the play to try
It is imperative to understand the significance of the profound effects these elements have on the audience’s response to the play. Without effective and accurate embodiments of the central themes, seeing a play becomes an aimless experience and the meaning of the message is lost. Forgiveness and redemption stand as the central themes of the message in The Spitfire Grill. Actors communicate character development through both nonverbal and verbal cues; their costumes serve as a visual representation of this development by reflecting the personal transformation of each character. In the case of The Spitfire Grill, set design is cut back to allow for the audience’s primary focus to be on the actors and their story. Different from set design, the use of sound and lights in The Spitfire Grill, establishes the mood for the play. In other words, every theatrical element in a play has a purpose; when befittingly manipulated, these elements become the director’s strongest means of expressing central themes, and therefore a means of achieving set objectives. Here again, The Spitfire Grill is no exception. With the support of these theatrical elements, the play’s themes of forgiveness and redemption shine as bright as the moon on
shall firstly do a summery of the play and give a basic image of what
To represent and to appeal to today's society while a large amount of the themes and values stayed the same, some of these ideas I had to alter. I did this through the language and form of the play and also by using film techniques, if I hadn't of done this the appropriation would have seemed unrealistic and the audience would be unable to relate to the film.
To realize the vision of the play, the script, set-up, costumes, stagecraft, sound design, and acting have to communicate a unified message with which the audience will relate. The script will be tailored to ensure that the audience can understand the play as it proceeds. This is in terms of the language and terms used. Though the language will not be modern, it will be English that can be understood by the audience. This will be English of antique England as it will give the play a feeling of ancient times. The scriptwriter will carry out research on the level of understanding the local people will have of ancient English so as to ascertain that the script matches this level. Although many plays of that era were sung and accompanied by dance, this play will be acted out with spoken word rather than songs. This is because speaking will ensure the audience hears the conversations as they go on and that they understand. This is ...
...ing something that they had either experienced or had a family member experience. As a result, it caused them to identify with the play. The manner in which this play has been configured such that it is drawing on the predatory and imperialistic tendencies displayed by multinational conglomerates provides a way for today's audience to identify with the plight of the characters and their realm.
the viewers that it is modern. It is effective to have the play in a
In this essay I shall be writing about why I agree that with the play,
It was good setting to get the attention from the audience and also a way to move around or change settings of the play. Although I love this play my small critic for this play was the players. Some others actors had understandable accents but others didn’t. For example, the brother of the servant his accent was confusing because he kept switching his accent from different country languages. This play was really nice it had a little of bit of everything drama, comedy, romance, betrayal. What like about this play it was how they used the dramatic structure the inciting incident and the climax. The inciting incident for this play of musical comedy murders of 1940 was guessing who the killer of the play was because there was tension building up not knowing who the murder was. The climax for this play would be for me finding out who was the murder and just being in shock how everything had change into a new scenario. Overall it was amazing show how it developed and how well an organized transition the play
reach into the ideas and themes of the play so we will have a good
When you first enter the theater, you are immediately in awe of the strongest aspect of this production: the set. The stage features a life-sized enchanted forest with “tress” as tall as the ceiling and a lit-up backdrop of a twilight sky. The tress would move around throughout the performance to make way for different scenes. In front of your very eyes, an enchanted forest would turn into the outside of a charming house with a lit porch and a well. The twilight sky would turn to a starlit sky and a soft spotlight simulating moonlight would compliment the faint sound of crickets. Suddenly the house and tress move around and you’re in a town with a little cart selling baguettes, or a lush dining room with Victorian wallpaper, a chandelier, and china displayed on the walls. The world shakes once again and now you’re in, inevitably, a ballroom. A white Victorian gate opens up to become the walls of the ballroom, and a white marble bridge and staircase appear for the outside of the castle. Adults and children alike were in awe of the craftsmanship and technology.
one of the most important reasons could be the use of humour in the play.
The Merchant of Venice is a play set in a very male and Christian dominated society where other religions and women rights weren’t very well accepted by the community. However Portia, a rich woman who had previously been controlled by men, triumphs as she manipulates tricks and saves the lives of the men.
The scripted gives every detail of what the house is to look like and states that the house should be more, “…comfortable than messy.” By having the set look like a comfortable home gives an atmosphere of what many, in the audience, would consider a homely feeling. (Norman, pg. 1) With guidance from Marsha Norman, the author of the play, she displays how she envisions the play being acted out and brought into the lives of the audience...
On stage, these points were, looking at the opinions of a majority of both the audiences and the critics, presented successfully by Brook and the cast he worked with. From the prison guards who loomed in the background, clothed in butcher aprons and armed with clubs, to the half-naked Marat, slouched in a tub and covered in wet rags, forever scratching and writing, to the small group of singers, dressed and painted up as clowns, to the narcoleptic but murderous Charlotte Corday, Weiss and Brook offered a stage production that both engaged and amazed the audience, while at the same time forced them to question their role as the audience; no better exemplified than at the very end of the play, where the inmates, standing menacingly at the edge of the stage, actually begin to applaud the very people who applaud their performance, aggravating and confusing some, but forcing most t...