A Comparison between 'The Godmother' and 'Blue Remembered Hills'

Authors Avatar

A Comparison between ‘The Godmother’ and ‘Blue Remembered Hills’

        In my first year at Hautlieu, my class as a whole performed one play from ‘Sepia and Song’ entitled ‘The Godmother’, a spoof of the prohibition era. A year on, we studied and performed an extract from ‘Blue Remembered Hills’, something which is quite different in relevance to ‘The Godmother’, yet has many similarities.

        ‘The Godmother’ owes its origin to the musical ‘Bugsy Malone’ in which a cast of youngsters play Prohibition-era mobsters in the tongue-in-cheek 1920's gangster flick. So, ‘The Godmother’ was home to the roaring twenties, where Jazz was the music, and people danced till they dropped including the world famous Charleston, Fox-trot and Shimmy. One important factor of the twenties was in 1920, when President Warren Harding was elected and women finally got their first vote. This sparked the start of true independency for woman, whom had worked together to keep true justice. ‘The Godmother’ tells the story of Spats Valetta, a theatrical agent down on his luck, and a group of showgirls, who go to the lengths to dress up as male gangsters and support Spats against a rival gang, and ultimately, win. The theme of this reflects the time period, including feminism and the teamwork of the showgirls. The main theme for ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ differs from this, more focusing on the loss of innocence rather than anything else.

Join now!

        Similarly with ‘The Godmother’, ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ was written after the time of setting, and introduces seven children, on a summer afternoon in the West Country, 1943. It seems the perfect childhood, yet this certain play gives us the idea of the “loss of Eden”. The beginning shows the playful side, the wonder and magic, the imagination. Yet from when the group of young boys hunt down, attack and kill the squirrel, leading ultimately to Donald’s death, we are introduced to the pain and terror side of it. Because of this, it’s a product of its time; the 1940’s being the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay