PDF file: Drama - Higher - Lovers - Education Scotland

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OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION AND DRAMATIC COMMENTARY
Andy has inherited his role in the world from the previous
generation. He has become the victim of imposed propriety.
• We clearly see that he is not a passionate man. He is pleasantly
surprised when Hannah pounces.
• Right at the start of the play he is unhappy with the way things turned
out in his relationship with Hannah. Their relationship has become a
dysfunctional one; as dysfunctional as Mr and Mrs Wilson’s had been.
• The style of Andy’s narration is direct contrast to the style used by the
Commentators (in Winners). The function of the narration is similar –
to provide lots of biographical information and propel the action of
the play forwards. Andy’s style, however, is informal, intimate and
anecdotal. His narration is a form of theatrical alienation. By using
this device Friel breaks away from the convention of traditional
proscenium arch productions. ‘The fourth wall’ is crossed as Andy
engages in eye contact with the audience and we (the audience) are
therefore aware that we are in the theatre watching a story unfold.
The fact that the story is being told to us in the past tense accentuates
the alienation effect. This alienation effect doesn’t strictly adhere to
the model used, for example, by Bertold Brecht. His actors would
have come out of character to speak to the audience.
• This extract immediately introduces us to Andy’s predicament. He
starts the play isolated, isolated from his wife and mother-in-law. He
is married but not happily so. The failure of Andy and Hannah’s
relationship is not in doubt right from the beginning.
Hannah
• Friel’s notes on Hannah are also quite specific. ‘She is in her late
forties. She works in a local shirt factory, lives alone with her invalid
mother, and until Andy came on the scene had not been out with a
man for over twenty years. And this sudden injection of romance into
a life that seemed to be rigidly and permanently patterned has
transformed a plain spinster into an almost attractive woman. With
Andy she is warm: with her mother she reverts to waspishness.’
• Hannah has had little experience of men. She rarely saw her father as
he worked night shifts. She is uncomfortable with Andy partly because
she doesn’t know how to cope with being alone with him.
• Like Andy, Mag and Joe, she too has suffered from being isolated. She
has dutifully looked after her mother and in the process she has
sacrificed her independence and personal happiness.
• Her choices have been restricted due to the expectations of the
community that she lives in. Her religious upbringing has reinforced
this expectation. Guilt can be debilitating, and we see the effects it
has on Hannah. Until Andy came on the scene she must have been a
very lonely woman.
DRAMA