curtain, behind this curtain there was a staircase that was only used twice; once when the second actor was looking for whatever was making the banging sound and the second time when the Woman in Black was creeping up the stairs.
I thought it was ingenious the way the actors used the old picnic hamper, throughout the play. It was used as a bed, a cart, a hamper, a chest, a desk, a train seat and other such objects. The clothes rail was probably the most significant prop, this is because it was used to assist the actors to change character. They did this by discreetly switching one item of clothing, which distinguished the character they were playing. I could tell by the clothes that the actors wore and the way that they spoke that the play was set in the Victorian era. The colours were the same as the walls, neutral, browns, black, musty colours. The fabrics looked uncomfortable and itchy, corduroy trousers, coarse shirts and waistcoats.
Around half way through the play a dog was brought into the story, the actors didn’t actually use a real dog, they mimed it. This was very well done, the way they looked at the spot where the dog would be, the loving eyes, they even played fetch, and the actors were very convincing.
The production of the play was very different to others I have seen, there were only two actors who played all the individual parts. The first actor played at least five different parts which he played very well indeed. His facial expressions and body language were very effective; for one character he would slouch and droop his mouth and eyes, whereas for another, such as a waiter, he would stand up straight and smile. My favourite character was the coachman; he had a distinctive personality, which was eerie and a little supernatural. Somewhere through the play I was even convinced that he a ghost. Whenever the actor played the coachman he would sit slouched on top of the picnic hamper holding the reins and his whip, his collar muffled round his neck so that you could barely see his face and just to add to the effect, he wouldn’t lift his head when he talked to the other character, instead he kept his eyes firmly on the track. Both actors no matter what character they were playing, showed good rapport, this helped sustain the audience’s interest.
The actor that played several parts also played the narrator, every so often he would read a section of his report of the “incident”. During this part the acting was superb, the narrator’s eyes widened into a penetrating stare as the tension rose and he began to talk faster, his breathing was very controlled and I really believed that what was meant to be happening was happening. The other actor was not as effective; he only played two different characters, the second actor in the play who was the actor/director and the first character in the play that was the victim of the “incident” when they performed a play within the play.
So far I’ve explained all of the pros of the acting, one down side was that I found it hard to distinguish when they had changed character, scene or location. The lighting helped, in fact it was very effective. The beginning of the play started off as a sort of dusky light, this is how the lighting remained for most of the play but it was set at different angles so you could tell which scene was taking place. The brightness of the lighting also changed, whether it was morning, noon or night, it was also a signal of what was going to happen next, if everything went dark it was a signal to either cover your ears for the piercing scream that came next or a scene change. When the actors came out of their characters from the play within the play the lights brightened to a normal room bulb. The lights also lit up different parts of the stage, the light drew your eyes towards it because you wanted to know what was happening. The most effective use of lighting was when the second actor who was playing the first actor’s character was standing outside the old mansion, a distant silhouette of the mansion projected onto the back curtain. The projection was very effective; it had a tremendous impact on the audience and built up tension in the theatre to even greater heights.
The sound was very effective, throughout parts of the play the second actor would comment on their so-called friend the sound effects technician. The first actor was fascinated by the fact that sound could be recorded, this is because in the Victorian era, recorded sound was only just rudimentary. The sound was also very effective whenever the Woman in Black was near. Everything would go silent except for a mysterious banging rhythm, once the rhythm stopped the lights would go out and then a terrifying scream could be heard. Without the sound effects, the play would not have been as interesting, nor would the tense moments in the play be as frightening or have as much impact.
The moments of the play that I found most memorable were the sections where the Woman in Black appeared out of nowhere, or so to speak. Her presence was completely unexpected and the way that she glided across the stage in a ghostly manner was horrifying. I remember the graveyard scene when she appeared in front of the second actor playing the first actor, the nursery scene when she was sitting in the rocking chair, one minute she was there, the next she wasn’t.
Her make up was really well done, a white face with shading around her bones so that she looked gaunt and as though she was wasting away. A very memorable moment in the play was when the tension was at its peak; the second actor playing the first actor was staying in the old mansion over night, it was his second night there and he was starting to hallucinate and was getting very jumpy. The mysterious door in the mansion that had not opened earlier on in the play flung open and the actor ran in. I was practically holding my breath for fear that the woman in black was going to get him.
The dialogue of the play was easily understood, accents were used to distinguish each of the characters that the first actor played. The actors were well spoken because the play was set in Victorian England and there was a lot of descriptive language used. The narrator often used verbose while telling his report on the “incident”, this made it more interesting to listen to and helped the audience to imagine his surroundings and how he felt. When it was coming to a tense moment in the play the actors would start to speak faster, using shorter sentences as the tension rose, almost like they had had an adrenaline rush. Their breathing became faster but what I found interesting was that although they were speaking much faster they still managed to maintain the addiction of the words so that the audience could still understand what they were saying. The first few scenes of the play were a little slow and you had to concentrate to keep up with what was happening. The actors put more emphasis and emotion into the dialogue to make it more interesting and effective.
As I explained before, the start of the play was a little slow but it may have been deliberate. The slowness of the beginning helped build impact for when the Woman in Black started tormenting and haunting the first actor. Without this contrast of relaxed and tense scenes the dramatic scenes would not have been as effective. There was a general build up of pace throughout the play, towards the end of the first half the pace was getting noticeably faster whereas the first half had been more insignificant. This is because as the pace got faster the tension rose.
The special effects were nothing too glamorous. The only special effects used were the projection of the old mansion on the back curtain and the smoke machine during the graveyard scene. The smoke drifted into the audience and made me feel even more involved than before. I felt like I was in the graveyard and as the Woman in Black sailed down the isle towards the stage there were shrieks as the audience noticed her presence. I had frozen at that point, scared stiff. Seeing her so close, I felt my heart rate increase dramatically, it was funny because I knew it was a play but I was still terrified of what she would do.
Overall my favourite part of the play was the end. The actors had come out of their characters from the play within a play and were discussing how well they had performed it. The second actor start asking the first actor about the woman on stage dressed as the Woman in Black. You see, earlier on in the play the first actor had had a surprise lined up for the second actor. By the end the of the play the second actor thought the first actor had hired a woman to play the Woman in Black, the first actor had not hired anyone and had seen no woman on stage. Both men froze with fear as they realised what had happened…
