The play we went to watch was called ‘The Woman In Black.’ The playwright was by Stephen Mallatratt in the The New Victoria Theater and we watched this on the 1st February 2010 I thought that the play was very clever in which they directed the whole play. The play basically is this old man called Kipps who wants to tell people his story about this woman who lost her child and sister in a horse and trap accident in the marshes. The actor and Kipps swap roles, as Kipps dose not understand how to make his three-hour story interesting. She wasted away from the inside out ad became sallowed and pale faced.
As they are acting the woman in black mysteriously turns up during the story but coincidentally at just the right time. These happenings keep occurring. During the end scenes the actor is playing `Kipps after everything is sorted out all the deeds of the lady who died he gets married and they go for a walk in the park their son shows interest in the horse and trap that goes around the park. His wife and son go for a ride until suddenly the actor sees the woman in black. Before he knows it the horse and trap gets rammed into a tree the child instantly dies and the wife is seriously injured and soon dies from multiple injuries. What the actor thinks that this is the surprise Kipps has been talking about until Kipps explains that his surprise was that he learned his lines.
The audience gained an understanding of the play with the help of reccouring motifs such as the sound of hooves getting caught up and the sound of the cracking of the wooden wheel breaking and the bloodcurdling scream. The whole of the plays meaning folds out gradually as he find the papers that explain how they died and they pack so much in to a minuite when realization just suddenly hits you. Kipps objective in the play is to explain his story and see if all these happenings will stop and she will leave everyone in peace. The actors’ ambition in the play is to make Kipps perform a good and interesting play on his story. Kipps’ motivation is the persistence and help of the actor who’s goal is to help this old man tell his story to friends and family.
At the beginning of the play Kipps is a mumbling old man who is most likely nervous and not very confident, as he mumbles and drones about every detail of that day. He doesn’t really move around or change his monotone voice and his gestures are very simple and there aren’t very many of them. When the actor tries and shows him how to try and cut down on the boring parts and ad tones into his voice. Eventually Kipps understood and was trying out lots of different voices so we could tell that he was a different character, as they didn’t have many props. They both seemed to have a lot of focus and didn’t panic if anything went wrong. The actor seemed very convincing and was very good at acting Kipps, and Kipps playing all the extra parts.
The performance was enhanced by how little the amount of props they had to work with. The stage was also very interesting in the way that it sloped downwards and the horse and cart mixed with the scream was very powerful and really made a shiver run down your spine. All the colours were quite dull and dark which helped add to the sense of mystery and superstition of the following scenes. I think that the play was very good and used lots of drama mediums and elements to produce a good performance even if they used very little props and did not have a very big stage along with only three actors.
