Bouncers, on the other hand, is a fast paced, satirical look on the 1980’s night culture, and refers to how people escaped their ‘humdrum’ lives by drinking, and its aim was to draw a parallel on the serious issue of binge drinking today. Its style is stylised social realism.
One can already draw an obvious difference between the two plays, and that is that they are both set in completely different periods. Also, Bouncers is designed to be played by only four characters, and these have equal roles throughout the entire play, whereas The Crucible, being set in a village, needs a whole range of different characters, and some of these barely get to say a line.
However, it is possible to look past the obvious differences and unveil numerous subtle similarities. For instance, in The Crucible, one recurring theme is escapism, where the girls who are supposedly ‘seeing the devil’ carry on putting on the act and cause further loss of control, hysteria and paranoia among the people in the court so they can escape punishment. Equally, in Bouncers the prominent theme is escapism where as stated above, the men are trying to escape through alcohol, and this results in a loss of control within the characters which is reflected also by the girls in The Crucible.
Moreover, the majority of the characters in both plays are working class, with the puritans in The Crucible being farmers and ‘struggling not to plough on Sunday’ and the working class accent of Terry in Bouncers.
Also, another theme within both plays is reputation, where Lucky Eric, the protagonist in Bouncers clearly shows his anger and power to protect his reputation when questioned about his wife, which is obviously a sensitive topic to Lucky Eric. Likewise, in The Crucible, John Procter regards his reputation as important even when he knows he’s defeated when he says “How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul, leave me my name!” Lucky Eric is also similar in character to the judge Damforth, because both characters seem to take a natural position of power around those around them, sometimes by both referring to past experiences. For example, Damforth says: “And do you know that near to four hundred are in jail upon my signature?” This is similar to when Lucky Eric says: “Every day I go power lifting- I bench-pressed three hundred and fifty-four pounds yesterday.”
In terms of style, The Crucible is different to Bouncers because it requires a naturalistic approach (even though its style is also realism) in order to be successful in taking the audience back to Salem 17th Century. This means that many props will need to be used on the set of The Crucible like tables, beds, chairs, etc in order for the onstage action to be naturalistic and believable. The costumes that are worn will need to be similar to what people of that period would be wearing like long dresses for women, to protect modesty, and smart suits and coats for upper class men, to show their status. This would enable The Crucible to create good characterisation before the acting even starts. Bouncers, conversely, is a stylised piece and so is minimalistic with the amount of props on stage (the actors mostly mime specific props and actions- this is what makes it unique), because the play focuses only on the characters.
Nevertheless, both plays have heightened emotional scenes which go hand in hand with both the plays’ styles being realism, where for instance, the girls in The Crucible pretend they see the sprits and the whole atmosphere turns spooky and hysterical, and where Lucky Eric and Ralph start to confront each other in Bouncers and this also has an effect on the rest of the characters.
In spite of this, the heightened stylised realism of Bouncers is different to the realism in The Crucible where there is a strong emphasis on the characters and the relationships between them.
