I have been studying the play Blue Remembered Hills, by Dennis Potter. I will compare it with both Bugsy Malone and Blood Brothers, with reference to their period, the people and community, and the style used in the plays.

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Helen Clavering 10HS

GCSE Drama Essay

I have been studying the play Blue Remembered Hills, by Dennis Potter.  I will compare it with both Bugsy Malone and Blood Brothers, with reference to their period, the people and community, and the style used in the plays.

Blue Remembered Hills was set in West Country in the 1940’s, the end of the Second World War, but first shown in 1979.  It is about a single day in seven children’s lives, and shows how varied their emotions and reactions can be.  This contrasts with Blood Brothers, which follows the twins through their entire lives.  This is meant to be from the late 60’s to 80’s.  Bugsy Malone is again different as it is about a few weeks in the lives of gangsters in 20’s America.  Bugsy Malone is actually about adults, but intended to be played by children, the opposite of BRH.  I think that in both plays the idea is to emphasize the oddities of the characters, not to detract from the personalities.  Children generally do not make such good actors as adults, which is why Bugsy Malone is difficult to direct.  I think this is also what gave Potter the idea of using adults, to almost caricature the wasted energy and whole mindset of children on magnified bodies.  The actors really have to emphasize body language in the part they are playing, as I found out when playing Audrey from BRH.

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I interpret Audrey as aggressive, plain and jealous, yet still hopeful.  I tried to show this by using a whiny voice a lot and only standing tall when I was complaining.  I tried to hold a generally annoyed expression, which was quite difficult, but because Audrey is a child I made her mood change very suddenly a lot.  I found it challenging to make her a realistic child and to interact with the other characters the way she would, which made it interesting to me.

I saw a Liverpool cast perform Blood Brothers.  I was amazed at how childish ...

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