Evaluation of: "April"

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Lyndsay Roger 10S.3

Drama

Evaluation of: “April”

Our play “April” is the story of a young couple, Darren Lachey and Hazel Posslebottom, who fall in love at first sight. Our group used Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” and William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” for inspiration.

Hazel Posslebottom (Hannah Kingsman) is rich and upper class, living with her widowed father, Quentin (Samara Payne), and her sister, April (Adaora Inyama), in Posslebottom Manor, Highgate whilst Darren Lachey (Lyndsay Roger) is poor and lives in a Brixton council flat with his mother, a cleaner. This play tells of how Hazel and Darren meet, fall in love and tackle the barriers their love faces, which come think and fast due to their different personalities and lifestyles.

Hazel, whilst in the airport on her way home from a trip to Venice, accidentally knocks over Darren’s mothers cleaning trolley, and Darren has to come over to help pick everything up. They start talking and it is love at first sight, as in “Romeo and Juliet”, when they meet at a party and as soon as each sees the other, they know instantly that it is love.

However, when Hazel takes Darren to meet her father, Quentin decides that Darren is not good enough for Hazel and forbids her from seeing him. She disobeys him and continues to see Darren until one day, their three-month anniversary, they go out for lunch and Quentin discovers that his daughter has been lying to him.

He confronts her and the pair end up arguing, with Hazel eventually telling her father that she is pregnant! This is such a shock to her father that it causes him to have a heart attack and die, leaving the two girls with no parents, and April, the ignored daughter, with a grudge against Darren for destroying her family.

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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 ...

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