During the first scene which is called the phone scene, we have our first glimpse of what the characters of Laurence and Beverley are like. We can see that Laurence has a busy job that requires a lot of time. This is because even when he is home he is on the phone to help his clients. This does not please Beverley, you can tell this in the way that her facial expression changes from happy to angry when Laurence says “I will come and get it!” at this point Beverley stood up and looked at Laurence disgusted. “Laurence no!” this is done in a really annoying whining voice. Laurence is scurrying around trying to do things, at the same time Beverley is very laid back. This shows contrast between the two of them. When Beverley asks “how longs this all going to take…” Laurence answers him “wont take long” immediately after him saying this he starts to ring another number. You can see how much this annoys Beverley; this is shown by here turning away disgustedly. “Laurence did you get the lagers” this shows that Beverley is very bossy and usually gets here own way. “Laurence!” this makes Laurence feel very small and hurts his confidence.
The next scene that I have chosen is the scene called “brick wall”. The tension builds up throughout this scene and leads to a climax at the end. During this scene Beverley again makes Laurence feel very small. She does this by being very sarcastic when she says her lines. “Oh, I’m sorry, Laurence, its just I cant hear through two brick walls.” Beverley is saying these lines very dramatically and her hand gestures are big, this is due to her having too much to drink. “Laurence, would you turn the record up”, this again shows how she controls him, this time even more so because at this point she is at the bar which is directly next to the record player. Laurence does not want to because he is trying to talk to the other guest. This is what he says but he really doesn’t like the music that she is trying to play. This section also shows the contrast in tastes in music; neither of them likes the others music. They continue to argue about it and throughout the tension is getting more intense until Laurence grabs here arm. After this has happened you can see how much this scared Laurence because of his facial expression, Beverley is also quiet scared as well.
The last section is called “art”; this is the result in all of the tension in the whole play building up. Again it show the difference in there tastes, this time it was in art “Taste what would you know about taste!” There is an element of comedy in this as well when Beverley says “On so, I’m ignorant now am I” Laurence leads this is up by saying “no, you always have been”. This did not make Beverley very happy and you can see her frowning at Laurence. I feel that all of there kept in emotions come out at this point. This is for a number of reasons, Firstly because they have all been drinking. Secondly I think that they have just got on each others nerves so much that they just had to say something.
During the whole production of the play Beverley did a lot of moving around, she was always very busy trying to do things. She also danced a lot; when she did this she moved around the stage a lot using different areas mostly downstage. The reason that she likes to be so busy is because she doesn’t do anything throughout the day, she doesn’t work so she has extra energy that goes into to things such as dancing. Laurence tried to move around as little as possible, but found it hard when Beverley tries to make him do things, for example get the drinks. He mostly sat on the sofa or just behind it getting drinks, this was in centre stage. He ventures into the kitchen sometimes to get some beer or to make himself a sandwich, this shows that once he comes back from work he just wants to relax but he can’t because of his nagging wife.
Beverley’s costume shows that she is a woman who likes to show of herself and her money off. Laurence is wearing a work suite; this shows that he does a lot of work. Both costumes are very ugly, but that is because of the 1970’s setting.
The tension built up between Laurence and Beverley slowly and gradually throughout the play, this lead to Laurence’s to death through worrying too much about his marriage. Throughout the play Laurence became a lot more agitated, this was mainly to do with Beverley and also Tony to some extent. Beverly became a lot more attracted to Tony as the performance went on thus increasing Laurence’s anger. Beverly stayed about the same throughout the play; this was a very annoying character.
