PDF file: Drama - Higher - Lovers - Education Scotland

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20 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
OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION AND DRAMATIC COMMENTARY • She communicates her frustration in this Extract. She is angry with the position she has been forced into, yet she is unwilling to make the brave decision to do anything about her predicament. • Friel paints a positive, assertive picture of Hannah in this Extract. When the audience first meets her she is going through a renaissance in her personality. She has made the most of her appearance and in this Extract she displays a feisty eagerness to escape her ‘prison’. • She is in love. She is very passionate, and we see her take the initiative in the kissing sequence. Her approach to the kissing and courting comes across as quite comical on the one hand, yet tragic on the other. Here is a middle-aged couple who are made to feel guilty about kissing and courting in the room below Hannah’s mother’s bedroom. Indeed their cunning plan to allay the old woman’s suspicious mind emphasises this sense of guilt at doing something as innocent as kissing. It is important to note that kissing is all that is indicated in the love-making sequences. The script does not indicate anything more than kissing. Their sense of propriety would not have allowed this particular middle-aged couple to go any further. Illustrates central themes and issues • Frustrated love: A couple who suffer from the kind of repression that Andy and Hannah suffer from cannot have a healthy love. Andy and Hannah have a dysfunctional marriage. We discover this in Andy’s opening monologue. Andy takes us backwards in time to show us why this has happened. Hannah has to look after her invalid mother. She has conformed to society’s expectations. If Hannah was to put her invalid mother into a home she would suffer from guilt and society’s disapproval would compound this feeling. This is a complex predicament. Hannah is bound to feel very mixed emotions. This is her mother, the woman who gave her life and brought her up in the Catholic faith. She would have been all too aware of her responsibilities and of the sanctity of the family. She is also bound in some ways to be very close to her mother; after all she rarely saw much of her father when he was alive. Her mother would have had a big influence in her formative years. Indeed you could almost say she brought Hannah up single-handedly. Hannah does feel trapped however. She has become a martyr to the needs of her mother and is weary and tired. We know that she has not had a man in her life for over twenty years. She is in love with Andy and doesn’t want to lose him. She wants time to be alone with him and to be loved. She is in her late forties. There could not have been many eligible bachelors in this community and Andy represents a reasonably good catch. He is of the same social class as Hannah. He has a job as a joiner. He has his own cottage. Andy is pleasantly surprised by Hannah’s strength of DRAMA 21
Page 1 and 2: INTRODUCTION In 1993 Scottish CCC p
Page 3 and 4: OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION
Page 19: 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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