Rosemary : Ah. No, well, I must say we haven’t seen you. Not that we’ve been looking but we haven’t seen you.
Rosemary doesn’t want Lucy to think that she’s imposing on her. Rosemary also keeps repeating what she says e.g.
Rosemary : …………They know where we are. If they want t keep themselves to themselves, that’s all right by us. I mean, that’s why they put up that great big fence so they could keep themselves to themselves. And that’s all right by us.
When Rosemary was talking about Terry, she refers to him as ‘ my husband’ so obviously Terry is very important in Rosemary’s life. Rosemary was telling Lucy about the incident with Terry and the phone operator, she had to say it in the third person’s term. It’s like she has to relive the incident to describe what happened; she lacks communication skills. The operator incident is in itself a confusion. Lucy and Rosemary are actually both trapped by their situation. Lucy never really talks to anyone else except for her children and Rosemary probably don’t communicate with much else either, probably not much with her husband either. Some of the times, Rosemary isn’t actually listening to Lucy either e.g.
Rosemary : Oh. That’s the baby?
Lucy : No.
Rosemary : ( warmly ) Ah.
Lucy suddenly comes out of her separateness when she started saying that she’s sorry for being so rude and that she hasn’t spoken to anyone for days. But that was gone again soon very quickly. Then there comes probably the most important thing that Lucy will say in this play :
Lucy : Whatever he has to me, he can say to my face or not at all.
This is referring to Harry and is very important. It shows us an element of tragedy between Lucy and Harry’s marital relationship, the fact that this relationship is breaking apart. Lucy just switched on to a totally different phase when she said that.
When Rosemary was offered drinks, she was very indecisive, she was worried that Terry might get stressed if she comes home late. She was also expecting either an alcoholic drink or something like tea or coffee, she was very surprised when she was offered either orange or lemon juice, or even milk. Lucy starts to use infancy language to Rosemary as if she was a child e.g.
‘ I’ll get you an orange, it’s better for you.’, ‘ Sit still. Don’t run around. I won’t be a minute.’
The door bell rings and Lucy isn’t there but Rosemary is not sure whether to answer it or not. She feels guilty but in the end she did. One might be relieved by Terry’s entrance as we might think that the play will return back to ‘normal' but Lucy saw Terry as another child, just like Rosemary and was treating him like one. Rosemary is very much controlled by Terry, she likes to be bossed around, partly because she’s always not decisive enough. Terry was surprised at Rosemary drinking orange juice but Rosemary was sticking up for Lucy. Lucy was very formal in treating Terry, she had Terry call her ‘ Mrs.Compton’. She patronised Terry for being polite for calling her back ‘ Mrs.Compton’. Terry has started to accepted the rules that Lucy has laid on and corrects what he was going to say :
Terry : And what about Har – Mr Compton?
Terry tries to be humorous but is rather unsuccessful when he talked about men should be going out where women should be staying at home. This led to Rosemary and Terry quarrelling, and we can begin to see the tension between their relationship. All those feelings that were suppressed was released. They’re actually confused with each other, they don’t know what each other really wants. Rosemary thinks that Terry is always staying at home relaxing while Terry thinks that Rosemary is happy enough staying at home. We can see Terry’s male chauvinism coming out. We, as observers actually sense a feeling of childish-like quality in this bickering. Terry made excuses to go because he was afraid to stay, but Rosemary, like a little child was telling tales. She was starting to go along with the role of ‘ mother and daughter ’ with Lucy. Terry was more like a spoilt little brother who was being naughty. We can see Lucy’s modulation of tone from telling Terry off to coaxing the upset Rosemary. Lucy used ‘Mr.Poddle’, a toy, to cheer Rosemary up, and Rosemary actually laughs at it. She’s turning into like a two year old girl now. Rosemary and Terry are both acting childishly, like little brothers and sisters fighting
The scene with the forgotten key with Terry becomes even more tense. Terry is starting to get very angry and annoyed that they won’t give the key back to him. Rosemary is being torn apart between Lucy and Terry because Lucy wouldn’t let Rosemary give the key back to Terry unless he apologised to Rosemary. He’s posing a potential threat to Lucy but does not succeed. He gives up and says sorry to Rosemary. Lucy stuck her tongue out at Terry and he protested. The pacing of Terry drinking his milk is very funny, it gives an anti-climax feeling, then Terry suddenly says,
Terry : There’s a football international on television, you know.
This gives a great comic effect as Terry is trying to break Lucy’s tension over him but Lucy stays firm. In the end, Terry, just like Rosemary has been reduced to a small child by Lucy. At the end when Lucy kissed them good night, Terry kissed Lucy back and when Lucy said ‘ Sleep tight ’ and Terry replied, ‘ hope the bugs won’t bite’.
At the end, we can see Harry, trying to get into contact with Lucy through the phone operator without success. We see this little confusion between Harry and Lucy. Harry still can’t communicate with her wife, now we see why Lucy lifted up the receiver and replaced it immediately at the beginning of the play. She was deliberately avoiding to speak to Harry. Lucy seems to be a mother who deliberately isolates herself from the outside world and can only communicate through the language of infancy. Rosemary and Terry are also moving into isolation from each other. Those three are all victims. The tragedy is that any available life-lines are being ignored by all of them. Lucy does not answer the phone calls from her husband, Rosemary and Terry have abandoned any purposeful from of communication for a long time. Through Lucy’s confusion with her husband, she’s long since really communicated with anyone. It seems that even when Harry is at home, they don’t talk to each other either, let alone on the phone! Both Lucy and Rosemary’s marriage is breaking down due to neglect and the breakdown of communication.
All five plays also highlight the human desire to make contact, but also how often it’s failed. Harry fails to chat Paula up in Drinking Companion and in A Talk In The Park, each character does not want to talk to the one who’s chatting up to them. Each character in A Talk In The Park has a monologue, which also highlights the fact that those people are absolutely failing to communicate. They’re like talking alone although the other person is physically there, next to them in the play. You might find each quite comical to begin with, but underneath there lies a human tragedy. Arthur is very lonely, his chat about his collection of people and cigarette cards demonstrates this fact. He can’t cope in a man’s world, he thinks that women listen better, which is probably why he chose to talk to Beryl. I think Arthur is actually quite confused and not at ease with his own sexuality as he keeps talking about how he should be at home, there’s lots of things to do in the kitchen. Doreen is muddled and confused too. She can’t stand men, this could be because of bad past relationships. She finds that men are always so superior, and now, she’s poured her ‘affection’ out on her poor little puppy! Her puppy has substituted as her male companion, now SHE’S able to control ‘him’ and be the dominant one.
Doreen : ……And what I always say is that people who have dogs they’re the nicest sort of people. They’re the ones I know I’d on with.
This tells us that Doreen is really looking for friendship. Also in a way, Doreen avoids expressing herself as she never finishes a sentence, a bit like Rosemary from Mother Figure.
Charles is a born pessimist who’s happy enough to blame fate and the world for his problems. His life is in a state of confusion, especially since his wife’s death, even his business is in financial ruin. Beryl has a problem of not listening to advice even when she seeks it, her mind is already made up. Hers’ is a self-enforced loneliness because she lacks the courage to act positively and stand up to her violent boyfriend. Ernest seems to be the one who should be happy, yet he can’t stand being at home. He’d rather run than to face the problems. Out of all five characters in this play, it seems that only Ernest is unhappy, the others don’t feel unhappy, but we, as an outsider have ‘ double vision’ and so we know that the other characters are sad. They all lead quite sad lives in fact. Ernest doesn’t talk very pleasantly about his wife.
‘ I look at her some mornings and I think, blimey, I must have won last prize in a raffle.’ That’s bitter humour. In Ernest’s household, his communication between has wife has just come down to arguments. The final line, ‘ might as well talk to yourself ‘ says it all. I think we as audience, after seeing/reading A Talk In The Park will see how we have probably ignored those around us who needed to be listened to. Their loneliness is a cry for help. Sometimes we’re too busy thinking about ourselves that we completely ignore other people.
