Evaluation of Live Theatre Performance, Case-Study: 'Bouncers' by John Godber.

Authors Avatar
Evaluation of Live Theatre Performance

Case-Study: 'Bouncers' by John Godber

On Sunday, the 26th of February 2006, we went to the Crown Plaza Hotel in Dubai to watch 'Bouncers' a play written by John Godber and produced by Streetwise Fringe Theatre Productions.

'Bouncers' was a comedy that was enacted solely by four men dressed throughout in simple black tuxedos, indicating, of course, that they were doormen. These four men played a variety of at least three different characters each- both male and female- and depicted the typical Friday nightlife scene via snapshots of different people and their contrasting perspectives.

John Godber, the creator of 'Bouncers' originally came from the North of England. He obviously based his play around a setting that he was familiar with, and writes about his own experiences. The play is a social comment on the life of the uneducated working class in the UK, but has been performed all over the world. We watched the play in Dubai, a city with a cultural background that is quite different from the UK. This was probably why many of the jokes and puns cracked in the course of the play were lost out on the audience. However, I found it commendable that the actors had kept this in mind and had altered parts of the script to include little trivial things like specific venues in the city of Dubai. For example, 'going to the Mall of the Emirates' was mentioned casually at one point. This appealed to the audience since it not only made the play seem more relevant, but it made them feel special since it seemed like it had been engineered specially for them.

On first entering the theatre itself, the mood of the play was created. The hall was small and compact with a simple stage and rows of seats that were placed one behind another rather than in levels. The racy 90s dance music that blared from the speakers gave the audience a taster of what they would expect. Four solemn-looking men greeted us at the door, their smart black tuxedos making it clear that they were bouncers. They sternly told some people off for being so informal as to appear in sneakers...but when the lights dimmed, we were in for a surprise: the bouncers climbed onto stage as the actors themselves! I thought that this was a nice touch to not only warm up the actors so that they fully immersed themselves in the character, but also an excellent way to set the scene and get the audience more involved in the play by giving them a fully rounded theatre experience using invisible theatre techniques as well.

The story centered mainly on the lives of four nightclub bouncers: Les (Matthew Duquenoy), Judd (Jonathan Floyd), Ralph (Simon Watts), and Lucky Eric (John Carter).

Of these four, Lucky Eric could perhaps be called the protagonist. He was older and generally more solemn than his three colleagues. As the plot unfolded we discovered that he tended to be as compassionate as the other males described in the story were shameful and disreputable. Lucky Eric had many monologues throughout the play, and through them he related instances that really convinced us of his character- instances like how angry he would get when he would see young, drunk schoolgirls taken advantage of by the vulgar men who frequented the nightclubs. Eric has quite a tragic past, with a wife who left him to become a sleazy bar girl. He is essentially a lonely man, but tries to hide it under his macho, tough character. The other, younger bouncers also tease him constantly about his body image.
Join now!


The stories of eight people, enjoying a night out, were also depicted- four men and four women. It was interesting to see their varied range of personality. The girls ranged from the exotic 'Sexy Suzy' to the more mundane headache-ridden Elaine. The men also were of varying characters. Through all the fast-paced action, however, the play held a deep underlying message that was not lost out in all the humour. It was a message showing how hopeless and bleak people's lives could become. What all the characters shared was the feeling of failure, since they felt that the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay