21st February (Wednesday)
These are what we discussed the next day after watching the play from Donmar. |
| Synopsis & Interpretations |
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| Lights & Sound & Costumes & Set |
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| Pros & Cons |
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| Characters |
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The York Realist is a play written by Peter Gill in 2001, it evokes life in the 60s in a small cottage. The play focuses on an unusual relationship between two characters named George and John. The small cottage in York is where George and his widowed mother live, while John is an assistant director in London. How did they meet each other? Before George come back to York, he was an actor in the theatre where John is now working at and they found out that their feeling towards each other is beyond friendship.
Throughout the play, I was really amazed by how they portrayed sunrise and sunset. The warm light shined through the window and gave the wall a little shadow of the house, and the chirping sound from birds. It was too realistic that I would believe the characters are actually living in there. In the scene where it ended when George and John went up to the second floor, the whole stage area gone blackout but only left with the light from the stairway, even though the door was closed, audience still get to see the light from the gap between. I think the director actually wanted us the audience to spend some time focus on what's going to happen behind the stairway door. The sound of the boiling kettle was really on point, especially during the awkward silence between characters, the boiling kettle makes everything on stage so lively.
Besides, I think the costumes that the actors wore suit their characterization. For example, Doreen and George's mother, they both have maxi skirts to show the fact that they are "church going" type of people, and it's a religious thing that they can't show too much of the skin of their legs. And for George most of the time, he wore a tattered jumpsuit and a pair of boots covered with soil, we can tell by his costumes, he works in a farm. In the opposite, John from London, he wore a blazer and a pair of clean leather shoes. The different styles of dressing up themselves make a clear difference between their living environment and background.
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| a snap of the stage area |
Stage setting and props description
The very left showing the space of the kitchen, in the corner of that space, there's a backdoor to the farm. On the floor beside the sink which the picture does not show, that's the boots George needs to wear whenever he's going to the farm.
Come to the middle of the stage there's a built-in stove and in front of it there's a one seater sofa. Beside the stove, there is a stairway door to the second floor.
On the upstage, that's the dining area where everyone eats and have their tea. Lastly, the top right of the picture, that's the main entrance of the little cottage.
After seeing the real stage with my eyes, I get to see the difference between this stage and the stage we made in college. We have our kitchen off stage because of lacking space. But with Donmar, they had the whole kitchen on stage. It's really nice to watch when there are some additional messages from the characters for example when John came over, George went to get some tea but additionally, he stood there and let himself to calm a bit in order to face John, but only audience could see that. Also before George open the door for John to come in, we get to see John from the window, he was showing very nervous and tried to be normal.
Overall: I think the performance was really successful, the acting was natural and the portrayal of the character's characterization was good. The set of the stage was realistic and is believable enough for the audience. This performance will become a reference for me to work on ours, the actors had put in much of the skills and also their effort. For a successful performance like this, even though they had done this many times, but the quality of their performance did not lay back at all, I can tell because their performance was full of energy and their objectives towards other characters were really clear. Before watching a real performance of The York Realist, most of us were unclear about some of the scenes especially for the flashback at the beginning. But after the show, every one of us had a bunch of ideas in our head for examples, the awkwardness between John and George, the interactions between Babara and George also the mother, the exits and entrances(how we want the characters to enter the scene and exit from the scene), and many many more details that we didn't think at the beginning. Watching a show by professional actors is aiding me to become one of them, I get to learn their skills that I'm lacking and see a different way of showing the exact same thing with different people. Overall, I think this show is helping me a lot and it leads me to a direction how I will want myself to be in this play.
