Evaluation

On the 16^th of April at the Charles cryer theatre, theatre strand did a performance of ‘Great Expectations’. For the past two terms we have been working on this play and progressing it for it to be ready for showing. In the first lesson we watched the channel 4 series of ‘great expectations’ so we really got to know the characters and what is was about after we got our scripts and where cast.

Someone in our cast who I though was really impressive and fully committed to the role was Daniel he was the perfect type cast but he didn’t let this deify his role he owned it and worked really hard. In one scene he had to fight with willa and even though he was being active on stage and being physical he also was very good at projecting his voice so that all sides of the theatre could her him. He is already well spoken but for this play he exhentuated his natural voice to create a strong character.

Another person who I though displayed a strong sense of characterisation was ivory she really took on her role and got lost in it. During the rehearsals she was always focused and when not on stage she was reading her lines. She took a bold move and chose not to base the character on the TV show that we saw and she put her own twist on it. For example the scene when ivory asks pip to sing and she uses a range of levels in her voice and adds extra stress to some words making her character more divers.

One of the strongest moments of the performance was the change over between the first and second half; the London scene. Everyone entered the stage using sound effects e.g the bell of the Big Ben and the house and carriages we created a sound scape of London to show the change of scene as before we were in the county and now we are in London.

We did this by using physical theatre and using our bodies to create the famous landmarks in the Victorian era like the Big ben but we had to make sure nothing was modern.

This was successful because it was more entertaining for the audience because it used both senses sight and sound which made the play over all more interesting. Also in this scene music was also incorporated to again make the play more entertaining.

Another part of the of the play that I found was so effective was the pre-set although it tequenicly was not part of the play it gave the audience a good understanding of the fact that the characters are shared and who the chorus were.

The weaknesses of the show I believed were in one of the scenes the change over between willer and Tyler and the idea of Tyler being pip, I think a lot more could have been done and I believe the chorus should of got involved to make the change over more effective.

Also something that could have been improved on was the song ‘Old clem’ because I think it should of only been the chorus singing it to highlight how put on the spot pip was.

Over all I believe the show was a success demonstrating the commitment and discipline of people in the strand I just feel there should have been more communication between both cast so that the shared characters would have more resemblance to one another or shared characteristics so the play would’ve been less hard to follow but everybody worked well as a team and we pulled of a ‘Great’ show to be proud of.