He uses the forest symbolically as well as literally, as in Blue Remembered Hills, the forest symbolises the Garden of Eden. Blue Remembered Hills touches on the fact that humanity spoils the Garden of Eden as the children chase, and kill, a squirrel:
A grey blur as a stunned squirrel, hit by a stone, hurtles out of the tree, down on the ground beneath.
Raymond: (eventually) Is-is him d-dud-dead?
Peter: Oy. ‘Course him is. Deader than dead.
John: (awed) Him couldn’t live through that.
As you will notice from the extract, he has written the play in a forest dialect. I think this is key to the play as it fits in with the setting of the forest. This adds a sense of authenticity to the play and makes it quite humorous:
Peter: I said give us a bit, didn’t I?
Willie: (reluctantly) Him’s a Cooker, mind.
Peter: Wha-?
Willie: Cooking Apple. And him yunt half sour. Honest.
Peter: Bist thou going to give I a bit or not?
Potter not only uses the forest and the forest dialect, but the domestic situations in the forest at the time of the setting of the play. As you can see from this extract, the father must have been an extremely distinguished person in the household.
The Children are playing “House” in the old barn. Donald is playing Father and Angela is playing “Mum”
Donald: Where’s my bloody tea, Missis? Where’s my tea, then? I want my cup of tea! (He is stamping up and down in angry imitation of “Authority”)
Angela: The kettle’s just coming up to the boil, sweetie pie.
Donald: (With enormous deliberation) I should bloody damn and bloody blast and bugger and bloody flaming bloody flaming think so and all. Give us a kiss. (He hugs himself in glee, rocking slightly)
Donald has just given us an insight into family life and to you and me, it doesn’t sound very nice for the wife. But for them, it is normality – the normality of the forest household.
By the time Potter is writing The Singing Detective, he is still using his childhood in the forest but less prominently. This play is notably autobiographical compared to other works such as Blue Remembered Hills. The main character, Philip Marlow, is a lot like Potter as he suffers from psoriasis, as Potter does, and is a writer.
The Singing Detective is split in to a triple layered plot. The first layer is the actual detective story. This is the story that Marlow is writing. The second layer is Marlow’s stay in hospital. Here Marlow drifts in and out of hot flushes and looks back at his past in the forest. The forest therefore, is the third layer in the triple layered plot. The forest layer of the story is all about his early days in the forest. The story contrasts the 1st story line as it is much more colourful than the dark, secretive detective story. As the play develops, the forest narrative becomes the more dominant one.
During our visits to the forest during the play, we meet, Potters family. His mother (a Londoner who is very out of place), his father (son of generations of foresters), Grancher (father to Marlow’s dad) and Gran (mother to Marlow’s Dad). During one of these visits, Marlow is walking unsuspectingly through the forest. He comes to a clearing and finds his mother committing adultery with a forest man named Raymond. By seeing this, the forest has symbolised to him the loss of innocence.
In this story, a detective story, potter has to leave clues scattered around so that the mystery can finally be solved. The reader is made to think that the mystery is only in the first narrative but there are actually mysteries to be solved in both the first and second narratives. In the first, we need to find out who killed the girl, and in the second, we have to find out the reason for Marlow’s illness getting so bad. By looking at his past we find clues to what makes Marlow what he is today. In the end, the forest turns out to be both the reason for his illness and the cure.
Potter has had much success during his life and has had many of his works televised including Blue Remembered Hills and The Singing Detective. By writing for TV he has explored the boundaries of producing a script by setting the play in the Forest of Dean. By going back to his roots in many plays, Potter gives an interesting insight into youth in the beautiful, picturesque location that is The Forest Of Dean.