The importance of casting the right actress for the role is, that you need someone that can portray the character that they are playing so the audience can feel what it is like to be Miss Ruddock. They need to be able to bring out her feelings and emotions and make them feel and look real. In this play I think that the person who plays Miss Ruddock should be Maggie Smith. I think she would be good for the role because she has already been in one of Alan Bennett’s play, ‘The Lady in the Van’. I think that will help because she will know how Alan writes and how he likes the part to be played and how he wants them to come across. Also I think she will be good because she is good at playing parts of people that aren’t very happy people they are quiet depressed and sad. I think that Dame Maggie Smith could portray the part of Miss Ruddock and also add a lot of feeling to the play and also she has got a funny side to her, she can also play a person that show their emotions all the way though the play. I think she looks the way I imagine Miss Ruddock to look.. Maggie Smith has got a traditional hairstyle, which is parted and is shoulder length. She has also got mousy hair colour so it isn’t too odd for someone her age. Maggie Smith has a very expressive face and so can show the whole range of emotions that Miss Ruddock experiences in the play. The clothes that she would wear would be conservative, traditional, natural colours. The shoes that she would wear are flat with American Tan tights. In her current West End role in Breath of Life there are only two actresses who tell the whole story though their speeches. This is very similar to this play which is a monologue. This also shows she is able to keep the attention of the audience when doing very long speeches. She is very good at putting a lot of expression into her acting to tell a story without lots of scenery or other actors. This matches up in many ways with Miss Ruddock in that in both roles she is proud and a bit eccentric.
The opening scene of the play could have a window be in the background and in the middle there is an armchair and a small table beside it, which has got a pen and paper on it. When the lights come up you see Miss Ruddock just sitting the chair looking out of the window. The room in which Miss Ruddock is sitting it is very old fashioned it is decorated with old wallpaper and the chair is an arm chair that old people would sit in. The lack of furniture helps to give the impression that she is lonely and isolated. She is looking out of the window because she likes to see what goes on outside because her own life is very boring. The room is old fashioned because this goes with her traditional views and sets her apart form the changes in society that are going on around her.
In contrast the end scene is going to be in just a blank room with just a window in it and a table. The window is high up towards the ceiling. When the light comes on there is Miss Ruddock sitting behind a table and there is just light on her which is coming from the window, which is above her. When she is talking the people that she is talking about they will be standing there and the light goes onto them then off again. So for example there will be people smoking, and Shirley writing a letter with a men standing behind her, which is Stephen and the last one will be Bridget in bed shouting. The room is bear with a high up window because she is in prison. There are other people in this scene because she is no longer alone and is happy for the first time in the play. Having other people shows that she is not isolated and because they are smoking shows she has lost some of her traditional values.
In this story there are two sides of Miss Ruddock. You see one of them when she is at home and the other side you see at the end when she is in prison. The side that you when she is at home is her as lonely and bitter, finding fault with everything and writing complaining and nasty letters. But when she is in prison you see the complete opposite, she is happier and has friends and has thing to do so she doesn’t has to write letters to amuse her self. You can tell this because at the end she says “ and I’m so happy”.
By staging the scenes in the way I have described, the main themes of the play are reinforced by the scenery, the lighting, the choice of actress and her appearance. One theme is the changes to modern society for example the Asian people moving in and the couple that live across the street, “And this other side’s Asians so they won’t know what’s normal or what isn’t”. She says “Mother knew everyone on this street” showing that neighbours don’t know each other like they used to. She also says “A cross doesn’t mean anything. Youths wear crosses now. Hooligans.” showing that she is out of touch with today’s society and doesn’t trust young people.
Another theme is loneliness and this is shown by the fact that she is always sat on her own in a room. She has lost her Mum and only has a cousin in Canada, “she lost her mother round about the same time I lost mine.”, “she had a niece in Australia and I have the one cousin in Canada.”. It is because she is lonely that she writes letters. When she receives replies from people it makes her feel less lonely. Isolation is also a theme in the play. She tells the social worker “I am afraid to go out on the streets” She goes to someones funeral that she hardly knew “I didn’t let on to the crematorium because I thought it might get them off the hook that but I actually didn’t know her all that well.” Just to get out of the house. Going to the funeral also shows the theme of self-pretense. Another example is when she thinks the council have put in a disabled ramp just because she wrote a letter – “ ‘Well that’s thanks to you Irene’. My monument that ramp”.
The thing I most enjoyed about the play is that you can really imagine it happening to someone. At first you think that writing letters is just harmless but it isn’t until the police come to her house that you know that she is doing damage by writing the letters – “who was it wrote to the chemist saying his wife was a prostitute?” The funniest moment is when she says that she can tell the man is a vicar because he wears bicycle clips – “I was still a bit dubious, then I saw he had cycle clips on so I let him in”. This is funny because it is stereotyping vicars. The really moving bit in the play is when she is talking about why she doesn’t like reading and is saying that in books people wish they are happy and they just are. She says “Whereas in life you can say you’re never going to be happy and you never are happy”. This is clearly saying that she is not happy and then she is saying that she wishes that she could live her life again – “Sometimes I catch myself thinking it will be better the second time around. But this is it. This has been my go.”
In conclusion I think that this is a play that needs a lot of expression in it so that it will portray Miss Ruddock’s changing emotions. The play needs to be staged in a way that doesn’t detract form the words as it is the words, not the action, that express all of the feelings in the play. The actress needs to be able to hold the attention of the audience and portray Miss Ruddock’s emotions in a way that they can understand and sympathise with. The scenery and staging is important as it can be used to show Miss Ruddock’s change from being unhappy to happy. I think that the play is showing that you don’t have to be on your own there are always people to talk to even if you don’t know them you can get to know them and make friends, you can be happy and around people. There are other things that you can do for example not write letters but learn something new, for example when Bridget is telling her how to have sex and also the fact she says “they’ve got me smoking now and then”.
Rachel Savage 11C2
8th September 2003
