Frankie and Johnny Review.

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Frankie and Johnny

Review

Frankie and Johnny an unexpected production revolving around a triangular love story.  This production shows great techniques of drama.  It includes some melodious voices to go with the spirited music that give the production a little more life as the hot seating and the story telling bores the audience too much.  No such lighting to create a specific mood or to change the atmosphere, which makes the show a bit dull.  However the use of music, sound and movement brightened the dull scenes portrayed by the three characters.

The set had a mat to base the play upon, a lighting rig to situate the lightings and costumes on; also the set included some stools.

The set indicated to us of what was going to take place in the play as the costumes were visible and we could see three white shirts with bloodstains on, which immediately made me confused right from the start.

In my opinion this set created an instant reflection of scene changes and also an indication of murder!

There were many spotlights but only two main focus colours of the light, one for the action spotting and the other yellow spotlight was lit on the audience who were sitting in the round to suggest an audience involvement throughout the play as this related to their statement:

‘Aim to engage you the audience.’

As the audience were lit, it really made us feel comfortable and more involved in the action as they tried to do this to not make us feel unwanted in the play.

        As the opening of the production is viewed, loud music and fast movement introduces the play as three characters, Alice, Frankie and Johnny model in the narrow space. 

        The production had many contrasting points.  At one point there was silence symbolising a romantic mood, as the theatre in the round made us feel more interlocking with the action.  Also the lighting, which was, quite light was flowing in with the romantic scene where Frankie is asking Johnny to express his love for her by saying loudly that he loves her.  The projector viewed this significant freeze frame.  However if the projector were not there then we wouldn’t have known which images were important.  Also the projector is a modern technology and the play was established in around the 1930s and so the production was purposely mixing in the old with the new and trying to bring out the modern day features and situating them into the historical atmosphere in America.

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        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 ...

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