At Quentin’s funeral, April swears revenge against the man who (in her eyes) destroyed her family. She poisons Darren, he dies and that is how the play is finished.
Quentin is a very rich, quite old-fashioned, condescending man. He loves his daughter Hazel very much, but cannot forgive April for taking the life of his wife. He therefore does not treat her as nicely as Hazel, and often ignores her. He has a deep, dark secret in his past, that he got a girl pregnant when he was younger and ran away from his responsibilities, which is why he distrustful of Darren. He also does not like the idea of his cherished daughter going out with someone who he feels does not deserve her.
Hazel is a very adamant character, determined to go out with Darren, even though her father is against the idea, and deliberately goes behind his back so as to be allowed to continue seeing him. She is really in love with Darren, and although she loves her father, she cannot bear to be separated from Darren. She does not see social class as being important, and tries to convince her father that classes do not matter.
April is a strange character; although she has never been shown much love by her father, she yearns for it. She really wants him to treat her like he treats Hazel, but she does not see Hazel as being the favoured child, and still loves her older sister. Her father is very cold and distant towards her but this just makes her more tenacious. She tries extremely hard to win his affection and to make him notice her, but he is always very dismissive of her. She thinks she is doing what is best for the whole family by killing Darren, and thinks that, somehow, this would make her father happy.
Darren is quite a simple character. He is very thick-skinned and does not realise that he is not liked by Quentin, but he also has very deep feelings for Hazel, and wants her to be happy, but is worried that he likes her more than she likes him. He does not really care what other people think about him, as long as they keep it to themselves. He does talk about getting into fights, but they never seem to be his fault. When Quentin dies, he is genuinely upset for Hazel’s sake, trying to comfort her but not really knowing what to say.
We started by reading, as a class, “A View from the Bridge” and we had all previously read “Romeo and Juliet” in English lessons. We discussed the themes that “A View from the Bridge” explores; jealousy, forbidden love, hatred, passion etc. and found that many of them were also used in “Romeo and Juliet” also.
We decided to use some of these themes within our own play for example, April is a very jealous character, as Quentin does not seem to love her as much as he loves Hazel. We find out that this is because Hazel and April’s mother, Sandra, died giving birth to April and Quentin has never quite forgiven her. April is also jealous that Hazel loves Darren so much, when she does not even love her own sister.
Hazel and Darren’s love is forbidden, like Catherine and Rodolfo’s, and Romeo and Juliet’s, but like both these couples, the pair cannot simply stop seeing each other.
April and Quentin both display pure hatred for Darren merely because of his lower social status and his coarseness, which is similar to the hatred that is displayed by Eddie for Rodolfo and the hatred of the Montagues for the Capulets and vice versa.
We also really liked the idea of having a narrator who is also involved in the play, like Alfieri in “A View from the Bridge” which is how we came up with April’s part, the psychotic sister who tells the story as the play goes on. We thought that this idea would make it easier to tell the story and to give any background information or personal information to the audience.
The relationship between Hazel and her Darren is similar to that of Catherine and Rodolfo; they are in love, but her father does not approve because Darren’s background and social status are not as good as, or even similar to Hazel’s.
Quentin is does not accept Darren, rather like Eddie who does not accept Rodolfo, or like Lord Capulet would not have accepted Romeo had he known about the match between Romeo and Juliet.
As in both “Romeo and Juliet” and “A View from the Bridge”, we used a prologue, which we adapted from “Romeo and Juliet”, because we thought it would be a good way of starting the play, and a way in which to help the audience understand what our play was about and what was going to happen. We also thought that the prologue of “Romeo and Juliet” was very romantic, and we wanted to try to recreate the same romanticism in our play.
Our play is set in the late 1950’s, when social boundaries were being broken and questioned for the first time. This period is very different to that of both the other plays we looked at, “Romeo and Juliet” being set in the Elizabethan era and “A View from the Bridge” set in the 1930’s. For help with costume designs and props that would be suitable for this era, we had to use our own knowledge and look at websites and in books for some of the styles of the time. Social status was still quite important at this time, and so for a rich young lady to be mixing with a common builder, who also happens to be a cleaners son and have a criminal record would be quite shocking. However, it was also at this time that the younger generation were breaking free from the social status system and being “adventurous” and rebellious.
From this piece of work, I learnt a lot about building up a character, thinking about trying to portray a character without reverting to a stereotypical image, although my character was supposed to, in certain circumstances, behave in a stereotypical manner. I think that our group worked well together, working through problems and building up confidence in ourselves and each other’s abilities, not just with the acting but also with arranging costumes, props and scenery.