Girls and Dolls

Girls and Dolls – Evaluation

On 25th of March I went to see an A2 drama performance of an adaptation of ‘Girls & Dolls’. The Irish play was seen to be a comic tragedy, both the comedy and tragedy themes kept the audience on the edge of their seats. I thought the adaptation was excellent and it definitely fulfilled the high expectations I had of it. The adaptation was credible and realistic. Claire is acted out by Hayley Kemp and Kirsten McLennan and Emma is acted out by Antonia John and Leila Evans.

The play was set in 1980 and was the summer they met at the swings, the summer they built a tree house. Now in their thirties, Emma and Claire struggle to come to terms with the devastating chain of events that began that summer, to understand what they did, what they became and how they were judged. I felt the adaptation had a huge emotional impact on me through the lead up of suspense and tension that the actors portrayed through setting, lighting, special effects and of course, the plot.

The drama performance was set in a traverse staging where the actors had to perform 1800. This was highly effective as it created an intimate atmosphere and suited the adaptation as it was well suited to scene of confrontation when Emma confronts Claire about being obsessed with the family. As audience and actors shared the same space; brought a lot more audience involvement to the piece. The stage was set into two main areas, the park and the café, however at times the centre stage was also either Emma’s or Claire’s house. Being a traverse staging did have its disadvantages, actors were in difficult situation when facing the audience so we could only ever saw half of them or none of them. Just as you’re straining to hear an actor faced away from you, they turn full-force your way; or, in reverse, mid-speech there’s a sudden disconnection as they turn away. It’s near fatal in a play focused on details of a relationship uncovering the past.

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Cleverly the stage was also set into levels. The tree house was set above the rest of the stage as this gave a more visual interest to the performance. It also helped set the scene being on a tree house as it was higher than the rest of the stage implying it was something high up e.g. a tree. This gave more impact when Claire dropped the baby as it thudded on the floor. This also allows different characters to have the opportunity to communicate different status, for example when Claire was on the tree house and tried to communicate to Emma who was on ground; showed the audience Claire had the higher status. The various levels might represent different locations (the neighbors house which was situated above a block of stairs), or may just allow the audience to see particular bits of the action more clearly (when the baby was sitting on the stair, this was clear to the audience that the baby was alone and was an important and clear part of the scene as the baby was raised off the ground.)

Through out the performance, at times it was hard to hear from older Claire(Kirsten McLennan) however through out the performance, you could notice a great deal of different levels from Little Claire’s (Hayley Kemp) voice, the way it changed when she was getting intimidated by her father for getting her clothes dirty to the time she dropped the baby. Her voice not only changed volume and levels/pitch you could hear it deepen when she got frightened by her father to shrieks when she dropped the baby. This was highly effective as the different tones/pitch was extremely audience engaging and made it more interesting to watch. Young Emma (Antonia John) voice was amazing; she managed to perform her voice as the young girl she was playing. From an audience point of view, one could feel that Antonia was the little girl she was playing and it was all coming from within which led her to maintain the audience anticipation and engagement at all times.

It was not a coincidence that both Claries were wearing red and both Emma’s were wearing white? This was a highly effective drama medium used by the actors here. It led the audience to understand that the scenes played by Hayley and Antonia were only flash backs and it helped us to understand and engage into the scene by allowing the audience to relate and understand whom was who. This prevented the audience from getting confused as there wasn’t enough time.

Quite a few special effects were used in this performance such as lighting and technology. At first a clip was playing on the walls on loop, not until the middle on of the performance did it make sense to the audience what it was about. The clip in ones view was highly effective as it gave an insight to effort put in as well as greater dept to the performance. Technical sound was used such as rain drop this was hugely useful as it was engaging for the audience and helped set the scene a little bit more. This also brought a variety of different effects to the performance making it more interesting to watch. Lighting was commendable as it highlighted key areas of the scene at the precise time allowing the audience to concentrate on flash back or at the present time more clearly without wandering eyes. The lighting was harsher on dramatic points of the performance and lighter through softer parts of the performance. This gave a more intimate and engaging outlook of the scene. Allowing the audience to really relate to the characters emotionally and also allowing the audience to relate to each performer individually.

Girls and Dolls was a short summarized performance, however without previous knowledge of the play led a while for the audience to understand exactly what was happening. This could have been avoided through extended time to introduce the play.

Overall to ones opinion, this performance was fantastically summarized in the given time of performing it of forty minutes. Each actor went into great dept of really being the character and a lot of effort went into set design and special features. This is an immense performance worth seeing.

Rupi Vig of