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The Woman In Black: Play Analysis

Decent Essays

The play I saw was The Woman in Black by Steven Mallatratt, based on the novel by Susan Hill. It was a matinee performance in The Lyric, Theatre Royal on Thursday the 21st of May 2015. The Woman in Black follows the tale of Arthur Kipps, who has hired an actor to help him become confident in telling his ghastly tale. The Theatre Royal is a regional theatre, this means that different performances come down to perform for a certain amount of time.
Before I watched the play, I expected it to be terrifying and nightmare inducing, using different dramatics elements to strike fear. I was unsure on how they’d effectively use minimal props and actors and the final scene where the wife and child died. I thought that the timing of the performance would …show more content…

As well as this, the actors getting ready to walk onto stage behind the curtains was also visible, this ruined the believability and realism of the performance.
Dividing the stage was effective because it emphasised the actor’s use of proxemics and showed the different rooms. There was also a staircase that contributed to the actor’s use of levels. They also used the apron of the stage by placing planks across it; there was a particular scene where this was effective when Kipps suddenly fell down a hole in the planks. At the beginning they used the space effectively when the actor came out of the audience, it made the audience feel they were part of the performance.
The set was bland and minimalistic, this improved the effect of the performance because it placed emphasis more on how ‘the imagination is a prop’ and you don’t need a fancy set to make a good performance. It also emphasised the large wooden door that was always on set and never moved, making the audience curious of what was behind it. I believe the door was a symbol for when everything went wrong for Kipps, which is why it was so prominent in the performance. This symbolism stressed the curiosity and confusion of Kipps. The use of fog in the marsh scene also reflected a sense of uneasiness and confusion, sharing the feelings of the characters with the

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