THE PLAY P

DEAD GUILTY by RicJzard Harris

John Metcalfe discusses his production for the Carlisle Green Room Club.

Described as a p 'ycilOiogicJI thriller, Dead G/II lly is a well­written pl ay whicil offe rs two excellen t par ts fo r good ac tTe SL'S and two small e r parts we ll worth playin g. The ten s ion builds up grad ually a nd, even though the audience soon cottons on to what is going 0 11 , there is sti \I a good d al of mileage to b made in the 'will-she-gct­a w ay -with-i t~'

department, and red herrings which can be e lllpha ised to keep everyone interested. The one thin g which works against it, in my opinilln, is thnt there are too miln y short scenes, where the lights have to be dimmed ilnd props rearranged etc., and th is tends to ruin the tension a little. Having said that, it has a grea t deal going fo r it.

discovered that the pI her pa rt of the world border) had been out

beginning that the ~ ·o

illreJdy comm itted The two main characters ha ve to be skiing holiday, two \ really good actresses ilS most of the production, so I thir play's success will rest on thei r safely said that the re shoulders. I was very lucky in that somewhat fraught a two excellent ladies came forwmd Fortunately all the and more or less cast themselves. were very good IcaIT'" Strangely enough, both had little direction and recently played Shirley well tog VnlclIlilu (one for us and one for a group which eventually played a week on the Edinburgh Fes tival Fringe) so they were no s trangers to ' big

~. parts'. There were several actresses who could ha ve played the part of counsellor but, as usual, young men were thin on the ground. Eventually I found one of my own ex-pup ils, now a strapping seventeen­year-old, who took to acting like a duck to water and whilst

16

PRODUCED

l W much or how little to change ~ the short black-out ·. [ was not '" fussed about this, itS I would n he r the actors wen tin to the nex t

ne feeling as c<llm as possible d not worrying too much about tening buttons or zips, etc. It

loked good though, and it is orth trying to change whenever ssible. Julia 's clothes tended to

we less colour ilS the play went n, thus refl ecting her deteriora ting n ntal st<lte .

"is was the firs t set des igned and a inted by our newly appointed a e director. She used strong luurs, dark blue for the back wall

nd g reen for the main room. Ithough it is basically <lone room L if space allows, parts of other lms can be milde visible, This

as not possible on our stage', with exception that we saw a li ttle of conservato ry. If desired, a 'see­

'tlugh' wall could be used so that hall is visible. We decided

~ 3i nst that and it was quite 'ective just hearing th e door

ning and closing and the chain ~g put on, with the odd word of \'e rsation off stage. The set 19o worked very well on our e and one reviewer remarked . one could really imagine that

there were other rooms le<lding off the s.et and that the stairs looked as though they .:letually went somewhere'. Fu.rniture wa easy to find and a ll the props required were clearly indic.:lted in th s .ript ilnd again were not too difficult to track down.

This is a play that requires IOO'Yo concentration from the li ghting tea m, with a scene change coming eve.ry few pages, with only a few period s of half-a-dozen pages or so, a llowing the lighting operator to relax a little.

The scene is either a sunlit room with conservato ry door giving a good apparent source of light, or a room lit by artificial light. It also requires three fi xed spots for the final scene. Very important is a beam of light shining down the stairs which is supposed to widen as an upstairs door opens - a challenge! Then we see the 'shadow' of a person. It was eilsier for us (and for the audience to see) to h,l ve this on the wall rather than on the floor as suggested in the script. It worked well. The script cililed for the many scene changes to be done in B/ O, rather than using tabs. Some members of the

au d ience commented that th dim light used to allow the actors and stdg > s taff to see, detracted from the suspensE'; but WilS the noise of them falling over in the dark preferable7

The most s pectacular and most no ticeable sound effect was the opening one, tha t of the car crash. Plenty of decibels' worth of tinkling metal fed into a darkened auditorium certainly grabbed the attention of the audience. The music was ably chosen by our director (mostly suggested in the scri pt!) and played in on an assortme,nt of cartridge, cassette and CD, depending on how many effects had to happen at any given time. The most cri tical effect was that of the disembodied voice of the coroner, which had to fit in with on-stage speech. After discussion it was decided to do it live, through a backstage microphone, with a very patient gen tleman who turned up every night for two speeches with a two-hour gap between them!

We do not do many thrillers in our Club, but I think our patrons found

this a pleasant change and certainly every night's audience was enthralled, attentive and very appreciative at the end of each performilllcc. The only comment which came up time and time again was: "But I wish she hadn't got awClY with it." Yes, weill There are obviously many people who have 'got away with it' so it' s only right that occil sionally this should be shown. We played to 93% (142 seater) with four of the six performances completely sold out, and four seats free for Tuesday'S show. This speaks for itself. I'd recommend any society should think about this play, provided you have two excellent actresses.

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