Blue Remembered Hills is the story of a group of seven, seven year olds on a summer holiday afternoon. They are: Angela, Audrey, Peter, John, Donald, Willie, and Raymond. It is set in the west of England, in the Forest of Dean in 1943. At this time Potter would have been around the same age as his character, implying the facts, language and storylines in the play could have been based on his own experiences. On the other hand, Blood Brothers is about a group of people from Liverpool in the 1960’s to the 1980’s. The main characters are: Mrs Johnson, Mickey, Linda, Eddie and Mrs Lyons.
Both plays focus on childhood and the way children play. Blue Remembered Hills has children all the way through, but in Blood Brothers we see the children grow up. Both plays are set in a time when life was difficult for the majority of the population. When Blood Brother is set there was very high unemployment levels where the class divide was obvious. In Blue Remembered Hills although there is no typical class divides as we know them ( Upper and Working Class ), there is in a way though; we can see this when we look at Donald in the play. Donald is an abused child and the other children pick up on his vulnerability, “…I shall tell his mama. Her’ll skin him alive, won’t her, Donald Duck? Won’t her? She hits you with the poker, don’t she!”. This shows that Donald is not only being treated badly by his mum but also by his friends.
In our performance of Blue Remembered Hills I played the part of John; to show John was a seven year old I emphasised a child’s normal behaviour and mannerisms. One way I did this was standing with more toes pointing inwards and my hands in my pocket. I had to make this behaviour look natural, as Blue Remembered Hills is a naturalistic play. Nonetheless, Blood Brothers, is a non naturalistic play, because the characters break out into songs during the performance, they use these to convey to the audience how they are feeling, and what they are thinking ( e.g. When Mickey and Eddie sing ‘That Guy’ ) .
In Blood Brothers there is a narrator, who speaks at various points through the play, he also interacts with the characters by handing them props ( e.g. when he hands Mrs Lyons the bible for her to swear on). Moreover, there were also lots of people who played different parts in Blood Brothers ( e.g. the
men in the dole queue, the police and prison officers ). This is in contrast to Blue Remembered Hills where there are a set amount of actors throughout the play. Having no narrators or songs in Blue Remembered Hills means that the only way characters can communicate with the audience is through their interaction with other characters. This also means that the characters have to look more closely at their actions, mannerisms and body language; as the audience with interpret all of these to determine what the character is thinking and feeling. For this reason when I played John, I had very obvious signs to show his emotions, for example, when he was angry I would screw my face up, talk extremely fast and keep my arms crossed. On the contrary, if he was scared I would have my hands clasped together in front of me, my head bowled. My posture would be lowered and I would speak in an uncertain voice.
Both Blue Remembered Hills and Blood Brothers use props and costumes. In our performance we used back projections to show particular location, for example the barn would be symbolised by hay. These enabled the audience to distinguish each setting.
Overall, I have learn that Dennis Potter does not write simply plays, and that although they seem to be simple at first, as you study it in depth you realise that he says a lot about the society and human behaviour.
