I thought the script was very clever in how it followed the lives of the two brothers, but without them actually knowing that they were brothers until the end of the play. I thought that the contrast in their two lives was realistic to life today. I thought that my character, Linda, was very strong, and knew what she wanted and was quite determined. She had always wanted Mickey and had waited for him. I thought I would enjoy playing this character because I had to be fairly forceful! Mrs. Johnstone was also like this. She was very strong even though she had a lot to deal with and had quite a hard life. Mickey and Eddie were quite alike. You could tell that Eddie had been brought up differently and was more educated and went through school and university. You could also tell that Mickey had been brought up with a poorer background. This gave the two characters a good contrast of rich and poor, yet very alike.
We had many different scenes to set up on stage. The first scenes were in Mrs. Lyons house, so we had to create space and make it seem very big. There wasn’t a lot of movement in this scene, so we had to concentrate on our voices and limited movements. The next scene out of the house was outside with Mickey and Linda. This was good because we had lots of space and quite a lot of movement within the scene. The next scenes were again in a house, but this time it was Mickey and Linda’s house. During these scenes there was a lot of movement so we were able to use the stage effectively.
Linda came across as very common in her younger years, so this needed to come across in my accent. We decided that everyone apart from Mrs. Lyons and Eddie should have a Liverpudlian accent. This would help in order to have a contrast between the two women and sons. If Eddie and his mother have posh accents then you would be able to tell the difference between Mickey and his mother. The play was clearly set in Liverpool, so we thought we should at least try the accents. Luckily we all managed to get the accents that we needed just right. One of the only problems was that with the Liverpudlian accent we were rushing our lines, so had to learn to slow down but keep the same accent.
In my first scene with Duncan we had to act like teenagers, which wasn’t too difficult seeing as we are teenagers. As Linda I was a lot more confident and knew what I wanted, whereas Mickey seemed very shy and not quite sure how to act around girls. So I used very flirty movements, for example when Mickey went and sat on the wall, I went and sat very close and kept close even when he tried to move away or change the subject. In my second scene with Duncan I had to be a lot more forceful and threatening. I still maintained my strong nature. Every time Duncan tried to overpower me or grab hold of my arm I would immediately throw him off. This showed that even though I may have looked scared, I was still strong and confident and would not let him get to me.
As Mickey was quiet during his teenage years, he had to stand quite far away from me, and not get too close. This would show the audience that he was scared of confrontation with members of the opposite sex, and was actually quite shy. I had to show that I was the complete opposite and always get very close to Mickey looking him straight in the eyes whilst talking to him, this showed that I wasn’t scared of the confrontation and liked Mickey.
In my first scene a lot of it was walking around, but there was some sitting as well. We didn’t need that many props because the scene was set outside. We didn’t want half of the scene to just be sat down though, because this would get rather boring for the audience. To remedy this we made Linda get up when Mickey started talking about the boy in the window, so she could wander round the field. In our second scene in the house, there was lots of movement. Mickey was walking around the kitchen looking for the tablets, and so Linda was just sat there watching we had her trying to stop him, following him and trying to reason with him.
The only props we needed for our first scene was a stile. We added a bench so the stage didn’t seem completely empty. In our second scene we had to have kitchen props. I had to be getting Mickey’s lunch ready, so I had to have a lunch box, I also had to be hiding his tablets. These props helped with the scene because Mickey could show his anger by throwing the box and demanding the tablets that I had.
The costume in the first scene was very important. We had to show that Linda was a bit common. She had to wear a very short skirt, high heel shoes and a tight shirt. We had both come from school so Mickey had to have on his plain black trousers and shirt. He also had a cap on, this was to contrast with the scene he had done as Eddie. Wearing my costume changed the way I acted around Mickey because it enabled me to be a lot flirtier than I otherwise would have been. In the second scene Linda and Mickey were a lot older and now had a child. We had to show this in the way they both dressed. There wasn’t time for a full costume change because the scenes were one after another. I pulled my skirt down so it was knee length and put on a jumper over my shirt. This enabled me to act differently again; I was able to move around a lot more because the skirt wasn’t as short. Our costumes didn’t really need any research because they were set in the 80s, so it wasn’t too difficult to get the right costume. In the first scene Linda had to have very dark eyeliner and big eye shadow, to represent the young makeup, and also lots of lipstick. During the very quick scene change I wiped off some of the eye shadow and lipstick, so it didn’t look as adolescent.
For the first scene, which was set outside, we needed quite a warm bright lighting. We had to change for our next scene, which was in a kitchen, so we didn't need the lighting to be as bright or forceful as outside.
We didn’t have that many problems that arose during our rehearsal. Linda had to get her foot stuck in something. We felt that it would be more realistic if she were to get her foot stuck in some kind of stile, so we used a chair in which she could get her foot stuck in, a bit like a stile. This enabled Linda to hold her arms outstretched and get Mickey to help pull her out. It seemed a lot more realistic than getting her foot stuck in the grass. We also had a problem, that my skirt was that short if we sat down, as if to sit on the grass the whole audience would be able to see up my skirt, but it was that length for a reason, so we had to keep it. We put two chairs up, like a bench for us to sit on. During our second scene we didn’t have any difficulties. When we started to rehearse, we had great difficulty in getting the whole group together, there was always one person missing, this was due to illness. Luckily towards the end of our rehearsing time, everyone was back to normal and fit and healthy.
I was very pleased with the final performance. We all did really well. We were all really nervous before we went on stage. Some of our group had never performed on stage in front of an audience before; I luckily had, so I wasn’t too worried. The audience picked up with the humour of the first scene. Because we were acting people of our own age the audience could identify, and found it very funny!
I kept the accent going all the way through my scenes, but remembered not to talk too fast. At one point Duncan and I got our lines in the wrong order, but we managed to carry on and didn’t lose the scene. I felt that we could have had more movements in the scenes, like we had done in rehearsals, but we seemed to stay in one place and hadn’t use the full space on stage.
Altogether I felt that the performance went very well on the night, and that the audience enjoyed watching the play.
