The colloquial language at this moment made the audience feeling more involved in the action as the sentence,
‘Tell the world how much you love me’
Related to the teenage audience of everyday situations and so meant realistic to us, which made us feel that this story can happen to ordinary people like us, instead of Frankie saying that, express your deep love for me, which would have sounded rather poetic. It seemed that there was a disappearance of the American accent and a bring back of the British one which meant that the voice medium varied from time to time indicating two cultures mixing together. So again the play was trying to combine the different kinds of cultures to make the production flow and so make the audience stimulate their minds.
The American accent of Johnny and Alice was more fluent and accurate when the two characters were performing the, ‘Johnny bear Show,’ which made us realise the actual heritage of the play. The projector once again helped in viewing the props of the Barbie doll and the hedgehog, as the audience were unable to picture the action. This ‘show’ reflected the 3rd love story evoked in the production. The spotlight was fading on the dolls and so made the atmosphere more relaxed as the other spotlights were fading away.
In contrast to the romantic scene there were scenes that made us feel more lively and enthusiastic as the scene where Johnny is asking the audience sitting in the round if they have:
‘Fallen in love with someone that you shouldn’t have’?
The words then translated into a hilarious dance act including all three of the characters that were singing very enthusiastically. The movement of the characters had a drastic change from the moderate pace of moves to the swinging and fast paced dances along with spirited music that made the teenage audience more interested in the play. The digital projector viewed a stationary image of the character that was dancing enthusiastically. After the scene there was the consequence of Johnny falling in love with the wrong person. And so again there was a combination of movement vs. stillness. After seeing these contrasts, you could tell that the pace of the action moving along did change from time to time as part of the play was moving at a steady rate, whilst some was just performed in a rapid tempo showing how stillness vs activity shows more creativity in the sense of rhythm of the play.
The timing of the production was quite old around the 1930s and that too in America, which suggests that the Great Depression was going on in them days. The Depression meant unemployment and an economic crisis. This links to the appearance of Frankie and Alice who in the play had a dress on with a different colour.
In the depression period the people used to dress up quite fancily and so the costume that the two characters had on were actually reflecting the time and the place of the play that was influenced from.
However the characterisation of Alice was portrayed in a way that made her suit the role of the ‘other women,’ as Alice had a very sweet and low voice and the way she used her physical skills showed that her motivation of being a cause of the conflict was depicted solidly. Alice also had a red fitted dress on which immediately as she entered related to us of the role she portrays. Her movement when she first is introduced is of a fast speed and her body language evokes to us that she is quite smart and maybe an item for men.
At one stage of the play the whole secret is exposed to Frankie by Johnny who visually is shown changing costumes by wearing a medallion and a cricket jumper on, along with lowering his shoulders to loosen himself in order to disguise himself as a cricketer which looked rather impressive. So as Eric is forced to tell the truth to Frankie, she is thunderstruck and shows this by using foul language to really make us feel how she must be coping at the moment at the end of the play. As the language was colloquial throughout the production one foul word brought a real impact on the audience.
As Johnny was firstly viewed in the production of Frankie and Johnny, his body language conveyed several points of the type of a character he plays as his physique and his movement indicated immediately of an intense love along with a betrayer as he walked quite quickly and looked rather a material for women. His facial expressions conveyed a sense of cheekiness and had worn a sneaky grin on his face. The characterisation of Johnny right at the beginning indicated what role he was going to portray.
Throughout the production there were sections that were improvised by the characters. Sometimes asking the audience to give a suggestion about what to take for Frankie in the Johnny and so connecting to that Eric performed a mime of the ‘flowers and chocolates’ that he took for her.
This made the audience have more say on their suggestions and so kept us more interacted and attracted to the performance. This meant that the improvisation made us more part of the play as we had the right to speak up and interpret some of our ideas. There was also an explorative strategie performed in the play by Alice-hot seating which made us express our questions that we were willing to ask. Questions such as:
‘Despite of u knowing about Frankie, you still went out with him, why?’
This part was also improvised and so we were given the chance to take part in the play which made it quite interesting as the involvement of the audience was very different. Hot seating brought us closer to her feelings as her inner thoughts were exposed which made the production more realistic. However the pace of the play slowed down a little which made some of the audience quite bored and therefore uninterested in the hot seating. Instead of this strategy they could have used role play as this involves action too and they also could have used thought tracking so that Alice could have revealed her inner thoughts at a particular moment./ ‘Frankie and Johnny could have used But the music and the dances kept he audience more actively involved.
There was no such story drama in Frankie and Johnny as the whole of the play was narrated of the actual story. The narration included lots of action but with the form of the story a bit broken down. It had a parallel story to it and a montage where the interpretation of the play was performed in. these compelling ideas were influenced from the historical epic theatre performer-Bertholt Brech. Brech used his influential methods of plays being acted out freely, as he showed all of the changes of character, scene, atmosphere all visible to the audience vision. Guided from his ideas, Frankie and Johnny have adapted the techniques of the style being broken up, scenes being order less in a montage and a story within a story as a parallel story.
These methods made the production extraordinary and kept our interest throughout the play.
And to end the show, there were forensic tests done by the two female audiences as the music and the pace of the play was slowed down symbolising the sorrow of jealousy.
So overall the production had all the ingredients of a skilful piece of drama, spirited music, contrasting movements, melodious voices, interlocking staging in the round, mixture of cultures-American accent and British accent, combination of the classic with the modern and influential methods that were portrayed in a sequence of scenes.
A highly interesting production by the blah blah blah company who have with great creativity produced a mind blowing show aimed at teenagers.
Personally, I thought that the production was very exhilarating for young minds like me. If there was more of this type of a production performed then there will be an increase to the knowledge into skills and techniques of drama.
Shaista Iqbal- Centre Number: 37113 –Candidate Number: 8282 –Page