A Cream Cracker Under The Settee

This play is a one Act monolog about an old lady called Doris, who is comparing her life now with her life in the past. All the way through the play Doris is speaking straight to the audience. The playwright uses a variety of dramatic techniques to do this. When she talks about Zuleema and what she says,

“Dusting is forbidden”

Doris makes us, the audience feel that Zuleema is treating her like a child. This shows that she is not very happy with Zuleema and thinks she can take care of her self. Doris talks out loud, this lets the audience know how she feels and shows that she is lonely and old. I think the playwright has chosen this technique to show that Doris doesn’t have anyone to talk to. When Doris tells us what Zuleema says, she speaks in a manner which, makes us the audience feel that she is fed up of Zuleema bossing her around and telling her what do and what not to do. Doris uses the word “Dictating” to describe the way Zuleema was talking. Zuleema talks through Doris to give the audience a feel of how Doris is being treated.

Doris appears to pause before changing the subject, this shows that she thinks about what she is going to say before saying it. When she talks about the past she makes us feel that everything was perfect in the past and that things have changed a lot. Doris keeps looking at her cracked wedding photo, this shows that she misses Wilfred and her past a lot.

The playwright, Alan Bennet has chosen to set his play in a living room. Bennet has chosen this location because Doris is talking about her life that she has spent in that house. She has spent most of her life in that house, I know this because she knows about the people who used to live opposite her along time ago, she says,

“Folk opposite, I don’t know them used to be the Mardsens”

This is a preview of the whole essay

The room where most of the play takes place has not got much furniture in it so seems quite empty. About halfway through the play Doris moves to the hall, this reminds her of her baby because that’s where they had the pram for their baby. Different parts of the house remind her of the events which took place in the past. Towards the end of the play Doris moves back into the living room and is sitting with her back against the settee. This is where she spots the cream cracker, which she was going use to report Zuleema for not keeping the house clean. She is feeling hungry so she decides eat the cream cracker, before realising that she has destroyed the evidence. When Doris lets the audience know that her leg doesn’t feel right,

“feels funny this leg,”

the camera moves to show Doris’s leg, whilst Doris rubs it to show that it still hurts, which shows it hasn’t been long since she fell. Doris shoves the duster down the side of the chair so that Zuleema doesn’t find out that she has been dusting, this also informs us that Doris feels like a child.

At the beginning of the play the camera is on long shot, so that we can see the whole room where the play was situated in and then the camera started to zoom in on Doris’s face, so that Doris spoke straight to the audience. When Doris talks about different objects in the room, the camera moves out to show those objects. Bennet has also used music in his play to create an atmosphere. Music is played when Doris talks about what her life was like in the past and how clean everything was.

She talks of all Wilfred’s inventions that never really got past the thinking stage. She talks about them in a joking way, and also once again includes in her dialogue what ‘Wilfred’ used to say. She says how Wilfred wanted a dog, but she didn’t because she didn’t want all the little hairs everywhere. This was after the baby had died, Doris is trying to say that Wilfred wanted to replace the baby with a dog. She eventually agreed though, but she goes on to say that it never happened just like all Wilfred’s ideas,

“Never materialised.”

The camera suddenly zooms out to a shot of Doris, the fireplace and part of the window, as she hears someone enter the garden. She begins to shout,

“Hello. Somebody coming. Salvation.”

She tries to lift her self up a bit so maybe they would see her and help her, but it’s too hard. She Begins to wave as she realises it’s a young lad. Suddenly she stops waving, the camera zooms in then back out and she looks away from the window then looks back in disbelief as she realises what the young lad was using the garden for. She says in a disbelief manner,

“The cheeky monkey. He’s spending a penny.”

She starts to shout in a strained voice,

“Hey. Hey. Get out. Clear off. You little demon.”

Doris is so shocked by this act that she looks about in astonishment. She then starts to slowly lift her head and the music from before starts up again in the background, she looks out the window as she realises what she has done, she tries to make her self feel better by saying that he wouldn’t have known what to do.

Doris then decides to see if she can get to the front door and open it and wait till someone walks past. A full camera shot of Doris shows her struggling to lift her self up so she can move to the front door, she then says,

“This must be what they give them frame things for.”

With the music still playing the lights fade as Doris is still helplessly struggling to move her self. The music in this scene portrays a dramatic theme to the viewer, it also seems to follow the actions that Doris is making e.g. Struggling. The blackout at this point is yet again happening on a high point in the monologue, trying to capture the audience’s attention.

With the music still playing the lights fade back in to a dark hallway at the bottom of some stairs. The camera is on a diagonal shot of the room with a front door straight ahead, the door is very large and the catch is very high up on the door, with a window to the right of the shot with a slight light seeping through. The audience can see the bottom part of the stairs to the left, and a door way to the right. Doris slumped up against the door, with the letterbox above her head, looking very tired and worn out.

The music begins to fade as Doris begins to speak. Doris begins to bring more of her past into the monologue; she talks about a pram that used to be in the hallway. The camera slowly zooms in as she talks about the pram and Wilfred. She says,

“You couldn’t get past it. Proper prams then, springs and hoods. Big wheels. More like cars than prams. Not theses fold-up jobs. You were proud of your pram.”

This shows the audience her age, because of the way she talks about the prams that are around nowadays. She then begins to talk with her eyes closed as she remembers; she has a smile on her face. She pauses with a slight smile on her face, looking at the floor.

I also find that Doris tends to exaggerate events, such as threatening to use the cream cracker as evidence to get rid of Zuleema. Doris manages to constantly bring sanitation and cleanliness into the conversation, whatever the case, never forgetting to emphasize its importance. One of the things that Doris talks about is when she miscarried John, the baby. The nurse attending to Doris wasn’t sensitive or sympathetic and made the baby out to be some thing that was dirty and messy. It seems that Doris got no support from Wilfred either. During the pregnancy, Doris must have made a tremendous effort to prepare everything, such as the pram, so that the child could be bought up in the right sort of environment. Each thing would have to be sterilised, so it would be safe for the baby, however the midwife contradicted this. Doris may have felt the need to continue this routine as her own way of handling the situation, and became obsessed.

Zuleema reflects all of the prejudice that Doris has about other groups of people. Doris resents Zuleema for having to rely on her and not having the independence. To clean the house for herself. The fact that Zuleema is from a different ethnic group (we can tell this from her name) only provokes more resentment and grudge on Doris’ part. Zuleema is made out to be a patronising person who has no respect for the elderly, and tries to be an authoritarian. She sounds intimidating as she constantly threatens Doris with mentions of Stafford House. Doris simply reacts with cheeky or sarcastic comments, letting us know that she is not bothered and knows that Zuleema is just trying to influence her. Although there is regret and I suspect anxiety in her tone of voice. Doris doesn’t want to be stuck in a place where she will be treated with irreverence. She has unfounded impressions of the home, which are based on nothing, no experiences. This is very exasperating as she is throwing false accusations at Zuleema about going ‘daft’ in the place.

A lot has changed since her time, however Doris is convinced that society has taken a turn for the worse. She has a very negative attitude towards today’s youth.

I think Alan Bennet has used outstanding effects and techniques to let the audience know of all the feelings of an old lady.