The grand theatre leeds Essay Example for Free

The grand theatre leeds Essay Linda as a child is very excitable and active. She is dressed up (by her mother) in a very feminine way, however, she was a real tom boy inside. She carried on in everyday life things such as sitting down, as if she was a boy, legs wide open and crossed, as if unaware of the fact she was revealing her knickers to boys. On this scene when Linda is sticking up for him, they treat each other as the same sex, they are all the same as far as they are concerned, and they are totally oblivious to the world around them. Another scene when they are together is the scene when Mickey introduces Edie to Linda. They are all sat playing shooting with the guns. They are all extremely imaginative as they believe there are really shooting things. The three children are sat in the corner of downstage right, they are situate here so it makes them look smaller than they actually are because there is all the space around them compared to the amount of space used when the adults are on the stage. Here the relationship between Linda and Mickey is at its strongest. Linda hits the target every time, whereas Mickey misses, he doesnt show that he is jealous though. She laughs like a boy here, she feels completely at ease with him. Linda-Nikki Davis Jones-portrays the age of Linda very well here by shoeing the amount of concentration on her face when she is shooting, she is totally engrossed in her target. The relationship between Mickey and Linda is very close at this age and Mickey is not afraid to show his affections towards Linda or his mum. He doesnt think about his affections though, they are what come naturally to him; he loves to get excited and jump around. E. g. when Mickey bends over Linda to get the gun off Eddie he leans on her, whereas soon when he is a teenager he would never get as close to her as that without feeling embarrassed. The way Linda laughs when she wins shows the lack of problems and stress they had in between the relationship at that age, she is laughing with happiness and such an open body line, she has nothing on her mind. She has a lot of respect for Mickey but different to the respect he has for his brother, in the way that Linda laughs , flinging her head back as she does, she sees her self as equal to him, and would not get embarrasses in front of him. As teenagers Linda and Mickey are totally different. In the scene on the stile Linda is much more psychological, she thinks about her movements and what reactions they might have on Mickey. She is very flirtatious whereas Mickey is the shyest we have seen him in the whole play. Linda is stood astride on the stile; she is wearing her extremely short school skirt with her shirt buttons undone at the top. This outfit alone makes her look a lot older than she is (14) not because the actress is older but because her body language too is very different to hers as a child. When she talks to Mickey she tends to move forward from the waist as she speaks, revealing the space between her bra and her shirt. She intends to flaunt this to Mickey and his reactions are the total opposite of Lindas body language. He looks away and has his body on an angle to hers. He is embarrassed at the position she puts him in. Linda lets her hair down; she thinks that this will make her appear sexier. She is very impulsive here and doesnt seem to get embarrassed at all. She is much more sexually aware than Mickey and she thinks hes playing hard to get but really, he just thinks shes weird. Mickeys eye contact is very flickery and he doesnt actually look her in the eye very often. Her eye contact is very intimidating, her whole body level is a lot higher than him (because she is stood on the stile) and therefore she is looking down on him, making him feel small, her eye contact is fixed though in his eyes. She speaks in a slow provocative voice. When she deliberately gets stuck on the stile Mickey feels unsure what to do about this. She asks him for his help, she even says this sexily her knowing that he will feel uncomfortable about being so close to a girl wearing such a short skirt. He walks over and helps her and she presses her body close to him. Her eyes are still intensely looking upon him, he is aware that she is trying to flirt with hi but he is unsure how to react to it. He doesnt smile at all through this scene he tends to keep a straight face throughout but, making it obvious that something else is going on in his troubled mind. Linda and Mickey are almost at the end of the play, during the scene where Linda is trying to stop Mickey from taking his pills: In this scene both actors portray their complete change in characters well. Mickey has lost all pride in him self, he can barely look at Linda. They argue, this is a complete shock to the audience because you have seen them grown up from the age of 7 and yet you have never seen them argue. They have always stuck by each other. Linda is still behind Mickey but he is not the same anymore. Since Mickey got out of prison he had to take anti-depressants. Mickey has lost a lot of things, as a child he lost his dad. That is not something which has been an issue in the rest of the play. AS a child he lost his twin, he does not know about this but it makes the audience feel for him as all his life he has lost thinks. He lost his job, this made him become very cynical about life and be annoyed with Eddie his blood brother, this was the start where everything went wring. He had been made to grow up too fast, he had needed to, and he was annoyed with envy that Eddie was having such a good life. This showed tragic irony because; if his mother had have given him away he would have been in Eddies position not leading the terrible life he was now. His brother Sammy was his idol; right from the very beginning he looked up to him and loved him. He thought that Sammy was perfect from the beginning, but gradually, especially in the teenage section, he realised that Sammy was street- cred but was not who he wanted to be. Recently Mickey had been put under emotional blackmail from his brother; he didnt want to grass his brother in to the police because his brother got himself into trouble trying to help him. He had that dilemma on his mind. The weights of these problems and losses on his mind were conveyed amazingly in the pills scene. Mickey was pale; he looked several years older than he actually was. He was stooped over at the shoulders and wore brown baggy jumpers, trying to hide him. He lacked confidence because of his poor stance. Before he would stand tall and from the age of 17+ he was very open to Linda in a sexual way. Now they were so different he barely looked at her because he knew that he had given up on his life and felt ashamed that he had. When Linda was shouting at Mickey the tension felt was so intense because their body language was so private to themselves. This scene was the most emotional moment in the play for me because everything had gone wrong. You could see the frustration in Lindas face, she was frowning as she was shouting, she loved him and she had to watch her husband making a mess of his life because of the drugs. The voice skills the actor used here were brilliant; he talked in a monotone voice rather than Mickeys usual exciting voice. He also twitched which Mickey never did before; this showed what the drugs had done to him. All of the facial expressions and vocal skills were very subtle yet effective. The relationships between Linda and Mickey changed throughout the play; at the beginning they were extremely relaxed, fun, carefree, and full of life. AS teenagers they came to have more issues on their mind e. g. school life, one another, but they still kept the fun, and liveliness theyd had as a child. As young adults they had been forced to grow up as quickly as they did because they had to get married because Linda was pregnant. Because they had been forced to grow up like they did, they were face with more problems. Mickeys facial expressions throughout the play were the key to the audience believing whatever age he was, as a child they were much more impulsive and cheeky, as an a teenager he often looked embarrassed, and as an adult he looked extremely miserable, and stress ridden. Mickey and Linda both played their ages perfectly throughout the play and this were showed through their detailed voice skills, movement, facial expressions, and characteristics which ran through each scene. Willy Russell wrote this musical in a very witty and intelligent way. I noticed that in the beginning of the play there was a lot of humour, especially in the scenes between Linda Eddie and Mickey. The humour was used in ways which would show Eddies up bringing to be very different to Linda and Mickeys.