PDF file: Drama - Higher - Lovers - Education Scotland

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18 OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION AND DRAMATIC COMMENTARY Begins plot • Andy opens the play isolated. Isolated from his family and trapped into conforming to the ritual acted out by Hannah’s father before him. He sits outside in the back yard staring at a wall to escape from the women inside. When he takes refuge here he is ‘allowed’ to sit in peace and quiet without being disturbed. His environment, the back yard, ‘is a grey, grimy, gloomy, sunless place’, a visual reminder of Andy’s isolation and an immediate indication to the audience that things have not turned out well for him. • This half of <strong>Lovers</strong> is an anecdotal tale. Andy supplies the anecdotes. He sets the scene and describes past events. He gently draws the audience in and helps them to make sense of the sequence of events that are about to unfold. • Andy and Hannah have been married for over three years. • In describing the character of Hannah’s father, Andy is really giving the audience a character description of himself. • Mr Wilson worked the night shift as a stoker in the general hospital for fifty years. We suspect he did so to avoid spending time with his wife and daughter. He only saw Hannah at the weekend. • We find out that when Hannah’s father died her mother, Mrs Wilson, collapsed with shock and has been bedridden ever since. • Andy and Hannah’s courting had been seriously affected by these circumstances. They couldn’t have the same kind of courtship as other couples. They were expected to look after Mrs Wilson. Mrs Wilson’s needs were more important in the eyes of the community. • Andy reveals that his early courting days ‘were’ passionate. We note that his relationship with Hannah is anything but passionate now. • We go back in time to a scene which took place when Andy and Hannah were first courting. There is initially a strained formality between them. We see the diffidence between the couple and see the awkwardness that both Andy and Hannah felt, partly due to the fact that they were middle-aged and partly due to the ubiquitous presence of Mrs Wilson and St Philomena up above. In this situation, they find it difficult to communicate, to interact and to simply be themselves in one another’s company. • Hannah expresses her resentment at having to look after her invalid mother. She has become a martyr to the ‘needs’ of a dependent mother. • We question the seriousness of Mrs Wilson’s illness. She is bedridden yet she has a healthy appetite. She is alert to everything that is going on in her house. She rarely saw her husband on a daily basis as he worked the night shift for fifty years, yet his death has had a profound and lasting effect on her health. • We learn that Mrs Wilson is suspicious about what goes on downstairs. DRAMA
OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION AND DRAMATIC COMMENTARY When there are silences she rings a bell. Andy puts this down to Mrs Wilson having a ‘wild dirty imagination’. • We learn of Andy and Hannah’s scam for allaying the old woman’s suspicious mind. Andy recites a poem, Grey’s ‘Elegy’, all thirty-two verses of it! Friel uses this device to heighten the comedy. • Hannah takes the initiative in the passionate embrace. She is very passionate. Andy is taken aback by the ferocity of her passionate kissing. He is however easily drawn in to take part. Hannah throws herself at Andy because she needs to reassure herself of the depth of their love. • By the end of this extract Andy indicates that the passion and intensity of his relationship with Hannah did not last. Hannah was soon to be ‘turned into the image of her mother’. • No other character appears in this scene other than Andy and Hannah. Mrs Wilson makes her presence clearly felt however. She rings her bell and Hannah jumps to attention. Friel deliberately hides Mrs Wilson from view until later in the play. This structural dramatic device gets the audience to conjure up an image of Mrs Wilson based on Andy’s biased comments. • Andy describes the scene reenacted each night in Mrs Wilson’s bedroom, the ritual of the Rosary. Andy feels trapped in this situation. He doesn’t have the same religious conviction as Mrs Wilson and Cissy. He describes how he got caught up in the cloying, feminine atmosphere of Mrs Wilson’s household. • Andy informs us that he was aware of Mrs Wilson’s ‘ulterior motives’ and her ‘plotting’ right from the beginning, yet he felt powerless to do anything about his predicament for fear of upsetting Hannah. Introduces key characters Andy • Friel’s notes on Andy are quite specific. ‘He is a man of fifty, a joiner by trade, heavily built. His work mates look on him as a solid, decent, reliable, slightly dull man. Because his mind is simple, direct, unsubtle, he is unaware of the humour in a lot of the things that he says.’ • He is in essence a likable, if slightly boring man. Andy has conformed to society’s expectations. Is he the kind of man that Joe (in Winners) might have become if he had lived? • He is weak in not standing up to the old woman. • He doesn’t rock the boat; instead he accedes to the wishes of Hannah and Mrs Wilson as he seeks a quiet life. • He has inherited the position previously held by Mr Wilson. ‘And yet by all accounts the civilist and decentest wee man you could meet.’ DRAMA 19
Page 1 and 2: INTRODUCTION In 1993 Scottish CCC p
Page 3 and 4: OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION
Page 17: OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION
Page 45 and 46: DIRECTORY OF ACTING PIECES Mag. The
Page 47 and 48: DIRECTORY OF ACTING PIECES Hannah.
Page 49 and 50: Winners, Episode One Page reference
Page 51 and 52: Losers, Extracts Two and Three Page

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